Midlife Demon Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 3

by Mayer, Shannon

  I stared at him, not sure where to start with all that.

  Roderick cleared his throat. “She had a glamor on her, likely one that her gran put on her when she left Savannah to keep her safe. It dulled her sparkle, if you will.”

  Holy shit. Gran had kept me from being . . . too pretty? Was that what Crash had meant when he’d said I didn’t see myself as others did? And what was this troll business? Crash was gorgeous by any person’s terms. He’d mentioned that most didn’t see the real him.

  Alan shook his head again as if his ears couldn’t believe it. “You could’ve modeled.”

  I almost thanked him.

  “If you hadn’t been so chubby.”

  Oh, he did not go there.

  This time I snapped my fingers at him, grabbed his ear, and yanked him toward my bag while he caterwauled. I stuffed him into the bag while he squealed, not caring who saw me manhandle him. Flipping the bag closed, I turned back to Jacob who was staring at me with new interest.

  “She is not a necromancer,” he said softly. “But she has some power over the dead.”

  “Interesting,” the others all murmured, and a soft discussion began that I couldn’t hear.

  They’d blocked my ears to talk about me in front of me.

  Of course, that’s when I noticed that Davin, that slippery little duck, had snuck out.

  18

  “Excuse me.” I held up my hand, stopping the flow of conversation between the council members. Roderick noticed me first. I pointed to where Davin had been sitting.

  The council members burst into a flurry of movement that impressed even me. Half of them took off running, and the other half circled around Jacob. The only person who didn’t move was the old guy sitting at the center of the council. He beckoned me forward.

  I walked over to him and crouched beside his desk so he didn’t have to look up and crane his neck. “They pretty much ignore you, huh?”

  “Perceptive. They think age has rendered me useless, and they have given me this seat only out of respect for the past. My age has given me great wisdom, as yours has done for you.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “They won’t ask me . . . but I know what you are, young lady. And I know how much you are needed in Savannah.” His kindly smile made me think of a grandfather I’d never met, of a father who’d died when I was too young.

  Now, before you get any ideas, I’m not implying he was related to me—not at all—just that he had a kind of fatherly air to him. Like he’d give good counsel if asked.

  I smiled at him, already catching on to his game. “You aren’t going to tell me or them, are you?”

  His smile broadened, lifting the loose skin around his eyes, his lips not truly visible beneath all that beard he had going on. “No, I’m not. You will figure it out. And you’ll be better off for having learned the truth yourself. That is the way of the shadow world. Those who must fight for distinction earn all that they accomplish. Those who are given everything, like Davin, do not appreciate their power. They do not use it wisely.”

  “I think I’d like to call you Obi-Wan,” I said.

  He waved a hand at me. “I never much liked Star Wars.”

  I laughed and he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “They are done with you. Davin has sealed his fate by running. You were right that he should not have used his abilities and connections within the council to help your ex-husband sabotage you. Most likely he did it in order to get his hands on that spell book of your grandmother’s. Before you ask, they will not amend the situation for you—whatever debt you have is yours. You must deal with it on your own, or force Davin to do it for you.”

  Damn it, that had been my next question. “How deep do his connections go?”

  Obi-Wan sighed. “He is like a spider, weaving his web for years. I have no doubt he has many people who would help him, and some who would kill for him.”

  He let his eyes flutter shut for a moment. “The rumor is that Missy has the book now, that you traded it to her for information. But they say she is having trouble cracking the spell you and your gran placed on it.”

  I blinked up at him, trying to keep a straight face. “The . . . spell? Yes, of course, she asked me about that.” I couldn’t help it, I winked at him to bring him in on my little secret. That Missy’s ego was keeping her from seeing what should have been obvious.

  She’d been duped.

  Again the skin around his eyes wrinkled upward. “Ah, so there is no spell on it, blocking her from seeing the pages?”

  I lifted my hands, palms upward in an exaggerated shrug. “I guess not.”

  The old man chuckled. “She is so busy being clever she can’t see the simple switch you did. Well done.”

  His praise was something unexpected and lovely. Like a beam of sunlight breaking through the clouds to warm my face.

  “Thank you. I don’t trust her.”

  He snorted. “Few do or should. She is dangerous still.”

  Movement to my side drew my eyes. Roderick stood there. “I should take you back now.”

  I stood and lifted both eyebrows. “Everyone is satisfied with me?”

  “They realize you mean no harm. Your new group promises to be more effective than the Hollows, if a bit unorthodox. We can accept that. They might call you in from time to time in the future.” Roderick gave a short bow.

  “Did you ask him what he thought?” I pointed a thumb at my new friend.

  “Stark is an old man, and while he brings much wisdom, he rarely talks anymore,” Roderick said.

  I looked down at the old guy, Stark, and saw that he was smiling ever so slightly. I gave him a wink. “You know what? You’re right. But Stark, let me be clear that you are always welcome for tea at my gran’s house.” I offered him my hand and he took it, sandwiching it between his two dry-as-autumn-leaves palms.

  “I accept.”

  Roderick watched this back and forth and then put out his elbow for me to take. I looped my arm through it as if we were going on a date. Which was a funny notion—it would mean that I’d had a date with a fae king, an animated skeleton, and now a mage, all in the space of about twenty-four hours.

  And Corb.

  “Oh shit. I have a date waiting for me!” I yelped and started to drag Roderick forward. I wasn’t as desperate as it sounded—I was mostly concerned about keeping Corb waiting. Plus, I needed to tell him to lie low like everyone else, and I kind of wanted to grill him for some answers. “Let’s go!”

  Roderick trailed behind me as I bolted between the two desks that had stripped me of whatever glamor I’d had going in.

  “Stop, you won’t be able to get through!” Roderick yelled, but it was too late. I was between the desks, the magic putting the glamor back onto me with a bit of a sting. I shook it off. No worse than a quick wax job.

  Roderick was on my heels as I raced up the stairs. “Stop!” he yelled, and my legs froze, locking at the knees. “Stop,” he said in a softer voice. “You can’t know where we are.”

  “You mean y’all still don’t trust me?” I teetered on the edges of two stairs, my legs unwilling to move against Roderick’s command. But that wasn’t entirely true. A tingling sensation rolled up through me, and I pulled on that feeling of energy until it popped my feet free. I took a couple of steps and looked back at Roderick.

  He shook his head. “It’s against the rules here.” He paused and stared at my now moving feet. “Full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a woman. Of course I’m full of surprises. How are you just learning that now?”

  Roderick did a slow blink. “You have a point.”

  “Of course I do.” I shook my head and pointed at the scrap of material he’d retrieved from his pocket. “If you put the blindfold on me, then you have to carry me up the stairs. As you heard my ex say”—I smacked my bag on my hip earning a grunt from Alan—“I’m on the chubby side.”

  Roderick lifted the blindfold, paused, and let out a sigh and lowered it. “D
on’t tell anyone.”

  I grinned and hurried up the stairs. Well, hurried as best as I could. Somewhere around what felt like stair two hundred the burning in my legs reminded me that I still hadn’t reached peak physical fitness.

  Nor did my knees like these stairs. “Kill me now,” I whispered somewhere around stair three hundred.

  Roderick grunted. “Don’t say things like that. It’s the best way to end up dead in an alley.”

  I leaned against the wall and looked back at him. “At least if I were dead in an alley, I’d be lying flat on my back. This is terrible.”

  The slog up the last hundred or so steps left me sweating and shaking by the time we reached the top. I felt no shame as I fell forward onto my hands and knees in a perfect yoga tabletop—a move that Suzy had been drilling into me over the last week. Roderick offered me a hand, and wobbled as I used him to drag myself into an upright position. I leaned into him. “You know, you should probably hold your council meetings somewhere that’s not so close to Death Row.”

  He startled. “How the hell did you know?”

  “I could smell the candy and hear the river. I grew up here—this place is in my blood.” I wiped a hand over my face, taking the sweat off, but a fresh layer quickly replaced it. Those stairs were freaking murder.

  Roderick led the way out through a tunnel that did indeed end up funneling into the far end of Death Row.

  I could tell we weren’t far from Oster Boon’s bookshop. Only Death Row was completely silent without a single vendor in sight.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  Roderick held his hand out and the air in front of us shimmered as if a sheet of water were flowing down from above, kind of like the curtain that had kept me from seeing all the council while they watched me come through the magic desks. On the other side of the clear curtain, the Death Row I knew was bustling. Vendors were yelling across the space to one another as a few shoppers picked out their items.

  I lifted a hand and Roderick smacked it down. “No, don’t touch it. Who knows what your magic might do? You are totally unpredictable.”

  I snorted. “That’s just the hormones.”

  He took me by the wrist and pulled me sideways, behind the vendors. The magic worked like a one-way mirror.

  “Holy shit, you can spy on everyone?” I gasped, realizing the implications.

  I could look at every vendor, but they couldn’t see us. They didn’t even blink twice.

  He seemed unrepentant. “People tend to gossip when they shop. Rumors are often woven through with threads of truth at some point. We were the ones to create Death Row, for that very reason.” He led me away from Death Row through a narrow bend of concrete shaped like an S, and then we were in the back of the candy shop. Not the part I’d passed through before to get in and out of Death Row, but near the ovens. No one seemed to see us.

  “Your horse waits for you outside. The council will call on you if we have more questions.” Roderick gave me a slight bow. “No human will see you leave. It will be as if you are a ghost yourself.”

  Good enough for me. And even better? I was supposed to meet Corb at Vic’s Restaurant, which was just up the way from the candy shop.

  I rubbed a hand over my face. “Roderick, what is going on in this town? Are the people of the shadow world really battling for control? Or is there more to it?” New Orleans came to mind, and whatever force had been summoned with the death of Eric’s cousin.

  Roderick’s eyes never left my face. “They are. And we are . . . and it’s happening fast. We’re struggling to keep up with it.” He stepped closer, not in an intimate, I’m going to kiss you way—more in a you need to hear this secret kind of way. “You are the first to slow the oncoming tidal wave, Breena O’Rylee. That makes you two things: dangerous and a target. Keep your friends close and your enemies within your sights. If you’re not careful, I fear you may go the way of your grandmother.”

  He took a step back and bowed at the waist, disappearing as he slid back between the two ovens. It was as if the wall had just swallowed him whole.

  I hurried out of the candy shop, using my temporary invisibility to my advantage and snagging a couple of bags of homemade pecan bark. Hey, my appetite was raging, and I’d never claimed to be a saint. “Keep my enemies in my sights.” I snorted as I stepped out of the candy shop.

  I bit into the first piece of pecan bark, and the caramel melted slowly against my tongue. Skel waited quietly outside, standing between two overpriced bright red sports cars. Probably they belong to some of the council members. I had an urge to egg them, just in case.

  No, bad Breena, bad. I shook it off and kept moving.

  I wondered what the hell was going to happen to Davin. Or if they’d managed to catch him.

  “Wait here, Skel. I’ve got one more meeting.”

  Meeting, not date. I cringed as I realized I’d started thinking of it less as a date and more as a business transaction. Then again, that kiss . . . that kiss had awoken all sorts of things inside of me. But it had almost certainly been infused with his magic. Did that mean it wasn’t real?

  Why did it matter, anyway? I’d showered with Crash hours ago. Was my libido just that far out of whack that I wanted anyone who could make my blood sing? What about loyalty and connection? Things in common?

  What about hotter than sin sex between satin sheets?

  Maybe it was just too many years without attraction, without feeling wanted, without so many things that I was craving now that I’d finally awoken.

  Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t ready to decide yet. Crash might have been right to hold off on me. I needed to figure out what the hell I was doing.

  I blinked at my own thoughts.

  “Jaysus, something is wrong with me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Corb stepped out of the narrow doorway that led into the basement of Vic’s Restaurant. Dressed in dark jeans and a tight dark green T-shirt that pulled up the color of his eyes, I noticed that he was freshly shaved and smelled amazing as always. He looked me over. “You’re in your work clothes. Everything okay?”

  “Long day,” I said, still feeling a hint of the whiskey circling through me. “But a meal would help. And a good discussion. Also, we need a table with our back to the wall.”

  He held his hand out to me and I took it, letting him lead me upstairs like it was a real date. I didn’t order the pomegranate mojito this time. Water would be plenty strong enough. I took note that the damage from the explosion had been cleaned up. Maybe Karissa had used smoke and mirrors to make the damage look worse than it was.

  I gulped down two glasses of water before I slowed enough to see that Corb was staring hard at me.

  “What? You’re supposed to drink like ten gallons of water a day,” I said.

  “I think it’s ten glasses.” He smiled and I settled slowly into my chair, muscles in me sore and completely fatigued.

  “Same difference, and I’ve not been keeping on it.”

  Corb chuckled, but he quickly sobered. “So you figured out that I’m not human.”

  “Hmm.” I nodded and crossed my arms. “Go on.”

  “Alan and I, our moms are only half-sisters. They share the same father. My dad was from the shadow world, and my mom’s mom was from the shadow world, and—”

  I held up a hand, stopping him. While I fully intended to find out more about his magic and his background, we had more important matters to discuss. This would have to wait. “Doesn’t matter what your family tree looks like, though I’m sure it’s better than Alan’s.” He rumbled in my bag and I smacked it hard—twice for good measure—though that did earn a look from Corb.

  I took a deep breath. “Alan is dead. He’s a ghost and I stuffed him in my bag.”

  Corb sat very still, then reached for his whiskey and snapped it back. Tapped the rim, and when the waitress came over with the bottle, he took it from her.

  “We’re going to need this,” he murmured. “I was i
n his apartment, but I didn’t see his body.”

  I shook my head and put my hand over my empty glass before he could pour me anything. “I’ve already drunk most of a bottle today, thanks.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Start from the beginning.”

  I looked at Corb, really looked at him. “Can I trust you? I mean really, truly trust you?”

  That earned me a sad-eyed look like I’d just kicked a puppy dog. “Bree, I’ve never done anything to hurt you. I’ve tried to protect you as best I could, and given your ability to find trouble where there is none, that in itself is exhausting. I have ties to certain groups of people that force me to not always tell you stuff upfront.”

  “You find me exhausting?”

  He paled. “That’s not what I meant.”

  I grinned and winked. “Couldn’t help it. You set yourself up for that one.” I leaned back in my chair. “So you’ve signed something like a non-disclosure agreement?”

  “With spells woven through it, yes. There are things I literally cannot say,” he said softly.

  The waitress showed up with food we hadn’t ordered and I looked at Corb. He gave a nod. “I ordered ahead of time.”

  I didn’t care. I dug into the food, realizing only then just how hungry I was, how much energy I’d burned in the last twenty-four hours. I cleaned my plate and looked up to see Corb with a fork partway to his mouth, his eyes wide.

  I leaned back, letting the food settle. “Here’s the deal. It started yesterday really.” Had it only been yesterday? Jaysus lawdy, my life had turned upside down. . . “The minute I opened the envelope that holds all the information on my gran’s and my parents’ deaths.” I breathed out the words, recalling the feeling of ants all over my body, biting me here and there. The sensation that my life was to go to shit the minute I peeled that envelope open.

  “What was in it?” Corb laid down his fork.

  “I don’t know, I just . . . I didn’t get a chance to look at all the stuff.” I frowned, thinking about that. “I poured the contents out onto the bed and then . . . I got distracted,” I said. In fact, even though I’d been in the bedroom again during the last twenty-four hours, I still hadn’t looked at the contents of the envelope. I put a hand to my head, feeling those invisible ants crawling all over me again.