And yes, I knew I was only thinking about things like stairs and exercise to avoid letting my mind circle back to the fact that my friends had been kidnapped by a mob of goblins. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my cool if I let myself think about that. Because, no, I wasn’t about to cry. I wasn’t about to whimper and wish that someone would save me.
Gawd in heaven, help those goblins once I got my hands on their stringy little necks. I’d tie them in knots and use them for target practice.
Look at me go and look. There be my last duck, and it was completely on fire.
21
My breath came in sharp bursts as I stepped into Annie’s back room and pushed through the hanging beads that delineated the front and back spaces. Bridgette hung back. “I don’t want to go in.”
I paused. “You okay?”
“I don’t like the smell,” she said.
The smell of sage and a sharper, darker incense filled the air. I couldn’t put my finger on that one, but it was familiar and tugged at something in me, though it didn’t bother me the way it was bugging Bridgette. Peering out of the shadows, I could see Annie at the cash register, helping a tourist by the looks of it.
“So this crystal, it will help stave off bad dreams?” The woman looked to be about my age, with dark hair and the brown fearful eyes of a deer in the headlights.
Annie laid a gentle hand on hers. “If it doesn’t work, you come on back and I’ll do a reading on you free of charge. But I think you’ll be just fine with this.” She wrapped up the crystal in tissue paper and tucked it into a silken bag before handing it back to the obviously very freaked-out woman. Fear rolled off her in waves.
“Thank you, I really hope it helps,” she said softly, her hands clutching at the small bag as if it were her lifeline. “I can’t go on like this much longer.”
Annie patted her on the back and saw her to the door. “You’re going to be just fine.”
She closed the door after her customer and flipped the sign from open to closed.
“Well, I didn’t expect to see you out this way again,” Annie said without turning around.
“And why is that?” I leaned a hip against the doorway that led from the back room to the main area. “You know something I don’t?”
Annie turned to look at me, but she didn’t smile. “I work with the Hollows Group, not outsiders. You can show yourself out.”
My eyes narrowed as I wondered just what the hell was going on now. “I’m just a customer here for a card reading. And I get on fine with the boys from the Hollows Group.”
“Three hundred dollars,” she said.
I knew she’d picked a figure intended to shock me and make me go away. But why? She’d been perfectly pleasant in our first interaction. If anything, she’d seemed to be concerned about my well-being. Something had obviously changed. Corb was right about that.
Was it just that I’d been fired from the Hollows Group?
Well, I had three hundred, and while it was maybe stupid, I felt compelled to make a solid point. Or two.
One, I wasn’t going anywhere.
And two, she was not scaring me off with a high number.
“You want that in fifties or hundreds?” I reached into my bag and peeled off six fifties. “Never mind, here.” I slapped the bills onto the counter next to me.
Annie’s face was a thundercloud if ever I’d seen one, but she gathered up her tarot cards and sat at her small table with a heavy flop of her body. The table was set against the far wall, and my back would be to the glass door, but I felt better with it there, than my back to her. I could see just past her shoulder into the back room, and I was half hoping Bridgette would show herself. To our right was the chest-high counter with the cash register on it. Thickly made of old railroad ties, or maybe wood ballast off the ships from the river, that was more likely.
With a motion of her bejeweled and braceleted hand, Annie waved for me to sit across from her. I did, but I found myself putting a hand against the knife sheath on one thigh.
She shuffled the cards as she spoke. “You have caused some serious grief for me.”
“Really, how so?” I didn’t so much as twitch as I watched her shuffle the cards. “I’ve barely spent any time with you.”
Having spread the cards across the table, she leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. With my left hand, I swept my fingers over the deck. It didn’t take long for a single card to attach itself to me. I flipped it over and found myself staring at the Devil himself.
“Ego,” Annie breathed. “It will be the death of you and your friends. Or the death of a relationship.” Her eyes hooded slightly and her breathing hitched; her one hand resting on the table began to shake as she read the card for me. “For you, Breena O’Rylee, there is danger at every turn, in every aspect of your life. Danger and seduction, temptation and choices.”
“Sounds fun,” I muttered.
Her breathing hitched again. “Cage. I see a cage made of iron surrounding you, and the only way to break free is to destroy it.” She blinked and looked straight at me. “Satisfied?”
I scooped up the devil card and stared at it, at the artistic lines and the style of the image, from the horns to the empty eyes staring at me. Something in me made me pull out the first card I’d drawn when I’d come back to Savannah, right here in Annie’s place.
I laid the death card down first, then pulled out the second card I’d drawn, the moon card, and finally the devil card. The moon card I’d pulled from a deck down by the river, a deck belonging to the tarot card reader who’d been killed by Sean O’Sean.
“Quite the lay if you look at them together,” I said, running my hands over them, seeing something beyond the cards. I scooped them up, fanning them to show her the faces. “But you know what stands out to me the most?”
Annie stared hard at me. I could feel the weight of her eyes. “What is that?”
I lifted my eyes finally and peered over the top of the cards. “That they are all from the same deck. How is that possible when two are from you, and one is from the deck that belonged to the tarot card reader O’Sean killed? Unless O’Sean had your deck for some reason?”
She stood, sending her chair scooting backward until it slammed into the wall behind her, her hand reaching for something at her side, hidden by her voluminous skirts.
I dropped the cards and threw myself to the side as the boom of a gun went off, rattling the air. The feeling of something zipping by me had me flattened to the ground, but I couldn’t stay there.
Crash had said O’Sean’s sister was quick with a gun.
Oh. Shit.
Guns had more than one bullet, the last I checked, and I’d taken a bullet to the leg a little over a week ago. Once a month was plenty in that department.
I scrambled around the back side of her counter. “Annie, you really going to kill me?”
“You killed Sean.” The hitch in her voice made me grimace. Yeah, this was going to go badly.
“Well, to be fair . . .” I moved so I could peek around the edge of the counter. She had her back to the wall, and she saw me and pulled the trigger.
I yanked myself back, and the corner of the counter exploded in a shrapnel of splinters. “To be fair, he was trying to kill me.”
“I don’t care,” she snarled. “But rather nice of you to come to me, rather than making me come to you.”
How the hell was I going to get out of this pickle? I could throw a knife, but if I missed, I was down a weapon.
Unless I managed to get her to empty her gun. How many bullets in one round? Five? Six?
She’d shot twice already. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look around the corner again, pulling back even before she shot, which she did.
Three. That was three shots.
“Annie, this is not a good way to deal with things,” I said. “Don’t you know O’Sean was trying to take over Savannah?”
“I didn’t agree with him,” she said, her voi
ce as strong as ever. “I told him that it would get him killed, but he didn’t listen.”
“Well, men rarely do until their balls are in a squeeze,” I drawled as I dropped into a crouch. My hamstrings screamed at the tension, and then screamed a little more when I forced myself to pop up like a freaking groundhog.
Or maybe whack-a-mole. My head cleared the top of the counter and I was back down again as she shot not once, but twice. Five shots. Was there a sixth?
The scuff of a foot on the wooden plank floors told me she was coming in for the kill, in the most literal sense.
“Annie, don’t do this. The O’Seans weren’t the only ones dabbling with dark magic in this town. I’m trying to protect Savannah. You said it yourself, you told him not to do this.” I shifted my weight on my heels at the sound of her shuffling around the side of the counter, crouched just out of sight, no doubt.
“Brothers rarely listen,” she said.
I blew out a slow breath, understanding dawning. “Annie, I’m sorry he died. I am.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“You have to believe me. I don’t want you to have the same fate as him and your father.”
“My father? What do you know about my father?”
Well, shit.
She whipped around the counter, gun raised, and I found myself staring into the barrel as I slowly stood, one knife in hand. Annie tipped the gun, motioning for me to step to the side. Maybe she figured she had me cornered and wanted to shoot me somewhere less messy. But as soon as the muzzle flicked away, I lunged forward, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her arm underneath mine so my back was to her chest, the gun pointing away from both of us.
She screamed and the gun boomed twice more. Man, I’d been seriously wrong about the number of bullets.
The door at the back of the shop rattled and Corb yelled my name. “The door is jammed!”
“Kinda busy in here!” I grunted and rolled with Annie through the shop, fighting for control of the weapon. Sure, she’d fired seven times at this point, but I hadn’t heard any empty hammer clicks. For all I knew, there was some kind of magic on the gun, granting her extra bullets.
Annie jerked hard against me and I let her go, digging my nails into her hand, forcing her to release the gun. Heat raked down the sides of my face, and I realized she’d scratched me while we were wrestling for the weapon, her nails going for my eyes.
Her breath came in big gasps. “You killed my father too?”
My jaw ticked and I wrinkled my nose, because damn, that was not a great question for me to answer right then. “Yeah, same problem as your brother. He started it. And to be fair, he kinda killed me too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Now you are mocking me? When I grieve for them?”
Only she didn’t look all that grief-stricken. Not really.
I shook my head, my chest heaving, and said, “You didn’t even like them, did you?”
“That’s not the point.” She threw her hands into the air. “I’m going to finish what they started. You have to defend your family.”
I leaned back against the counter. “No, actually you don’t. Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they aren’t also crazy and dangerous.” I took the clip out of the gun and pulled the slide back a few times to make sure it was empty. “Even crazy people have family, Annie.”
We didn’t get any further than that.
The back door of the shop burst open, revealing Corb, gun already pointed at Annie. As if he’d known she would be the problem, and not some intruder. Bridgette stayed in the shadows, I could see just a glimmer of her eyes.
The front door rattled, glass burst in around us, and a squad of men dressed in black suits rushed in. Judging by the beeline they made for Annie, they weren’t surprised she’d turned murderous either. She didn’t fight them as they caught her by the wrists, cuffed her, gagged her, and dragged her out the way they’d come in, all in under thirty seconds. I noticed they didn’t actually say what they were arresting her for and thought about asking, but then realized I had enough problems of my own. I didn’t need to add Annie’s problems to the list.
I tucked her gun into the back waistband of my pants, but nope, it tried to slide down my pant leg.
I yanked it out quickly, before I could lose it entirely. It distracted me, somewhat, from the tingle down my spine that said I needed to ask Corb if this was his latest job.
The crunch of glass turned me around. Roderick strode in, cravat in place. His blond hair was as immaculately swept back as the other times I’d seen him. His eyes slid over to me, and he arched a perfect brow, damn him, as if he hadn’t seen me just hours before.
“Breena, why am I not surprised to see you here?”
“You know me, always where the fun happens,” I drawled.
Roderick looked at Corb. “You did a good job of flushing her out. Annie never did like having a more powerful woman on her turf.”
I flinched as if I’d been hit between the shoulder blades. What had Corb said down in Death Row?
“Why don’t you go see Annie, see if you can get any information out of her?”
Damn it, he’d fooled me again. Even if he had put some sort of protection spell on me.
“Roderick”—I kept my back to Corb deliberately—“does Corb work for the Supernatural Council Enforcers?”
Roderick dipped his head. “He’s one of our best investigators. Top of his class, which is even more of an accomplishment given his lineage. Not many people could pull off double duty between us and the Hollows Group, but he makes it look easy.”
I nodded as if that, of course, made sense, but all I could think was that I’d been stupid enough to think I meant something to him. Again.
Jaysus lawdy, when was I going to learn?
I made my way across to the small table that had somehow stayed upright during the fight, scooping up my cards and the rest of the tarot deck, plus the three hundred dollars I’d slapped on the cash desk. Small payment for almost getting killed, and for helping Roderick and the council apprehend someone they’d apparently had their eyes on.
Hell, my curiosity got the better of me. “What did she do?”
Roderick tucked his hands into his coat pockets. “Nothing that needs to concern you. But her attacking you was enough of a final nail in her coffin to make the arrest.”
I nodded and turned away from him.
The reality of my situation was suddenly in front of me again, weighing on me so heavily that my chest felt as though it were being crushed. Corb and Sarge’s support had felt like a lifeline, but I couldn’t rely on them. Not really. And I certainly couldn’t expect them to keep me alive. There was a real chance that I’d die in Goblin Town tonight, and I had to be realistic about that.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire . . .” I whispered to myself, knowing that Sarge at least would hear me. Turning back to Rod, I asked, “If I don’t make it past midnight, would you mind seeing about the blood-born demon in the Sorrel-Weed house? The papers that show who killed my gran are in the second-floor desk, third room on the right. Maybe you could look into that.”
Roderick blinked a few times. “And why wouldn’t you make it past midnight?”
“Going to war,” I said, then thumbed at Corb. “Mr. Trustworthy here is supposed to be my backup. So you can understand why I might be concerned that I’m walking into a trap. Or, worse yet, being used as bait again.” Here’s the thing, I’d gotten rolling, and now I couldn’t stop. “I mean, GAWD forbid I should be told the truth about anything. GAWD forbid my woman-sized pea brain could handle what’s really going on. Lawdy, save my lily-white ass from having to take care of myself!” Yeah, I might have been shouting at that point.
Movement to my left, the sway of a body and long dark hair soothed me a little. “Robert’s the only person left I can rely on. A skeleton, for duck’s sake!”
Robert swayed a little faster. “Friend.”
I blew out a slow
breath, forcing myself to face Corb. At least he had the balls to meet my gaze.
“It wasn’t like that, Bree,” he said. “I didn’t think she would attack you. I was weeks away from breaking this case with Annie. I didn’t think she’d confess that she was going to continue their work to you. I meant only to get your cards read, to help you tonight. I put that extra layer of protection on you, just in case.” His eyes pleaded with me to believe him. Maybe he believed himself even.
Sarge, who’d joined him, made the slightest of faces. Like he didn’t believe Corb any more than I did.
Who could I trust? Who should I take with me to save my friends?
Because the clock was ticking, and if I chose wrong, we were all as good as dead and buried six feet under.
22
I stood in front of the fountain in Forsyth Park, the portal that led to the land of Faerie, and hopefully to Crash. Robert swayed behind me, and Skeletor pawed the water at our feet. I patted the horse’s neck. Bridgette rode in front of me, quiet as a mouse. Sarge, who’d ridden over on his motorcycle, stood to my right.
“What about the time difference?” Sarge reminded me. “We won’t know just how long you are in there; you could miss the midnight deadline completely.”
I gave him a tight nod and grimaced. “I’m throwing all my cards in with Crash right now. He’s here; if I can get to him in time, then he can help me get the others out. I don’t see any other way, do you?”
We’d already been through this, but hell, why not one more time?
Sarge sighed. “Yeah, I know, but I’m worried is all.”
“Me, too, but jabbering here is just wasting more time.” I took a breath and looked them over. “Okay, here we go.”
“Why again do I have to be here?” Jinx grumbled. She stood in her spider form to my left.
“Isn’t Crash your boss?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you try to help me find him, seeing as you buggered off when you were supposed to be guarding the house?”
Midlife Demon Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 3 Page 19
