The two women suddenly grappled, Kitsy’s bony hands grabbing fistfuls of Edeet!’s honey-colored hair.
“Whoa!” Jane shouted, using her own glamour to give her words some punch. “Stop it, you two! Criminey!”
The two women stepped back, but it was obviously under magical duress. Their hands continued to scrabble toward one another.
Meanwhile, Timmy’s expression never changed. Aisha looked like she’d been punched.
“Sit down,” Jane said, directing the two older women to their opposite couches. They obeyed stiffly, forced by Jane’s glamour. “Now tell us about this diamond.”
“It’s mine,” Kitsy hissed.
“Too bad, because it was sold years ago,” said Edeet!, relish slathered all over her French vowels.
Kitsy bounded to her feet again, but Aisha pulled her down.
“Mom, please,” said the young woman, bringing us all up short.
“Mom?” Jane said, as we all looked between the two women. Issues of race notwithstanding, Kitsy had to be in her late sixties and Aisha was a teenager.
“I’m adopted,” said Aisha, with the exhaustion of someone who’d had to explain a thousand times something that shouldn’t have been a big deal.
“But my child,” Kitsy said, reaching for the girl’s hand to clutch it in a white-knuckled grip. Aisha leaned her head on the older woman’s shoulder.
“What does any of this have to do with the diamond?” I asked, nudging along the touching mother-daughter moment so I could finally (finally!) get Jane naked.
“The stone was mine, inherited from my mother,” Kitsy said. “And I gave it to my daughter, Julia, when she had the bad sense to marry Jack Dupont.” For a second I thought she was going to spit on the carpet after saying his name. “Julia died soon after the wedding. Jack went right ahead and married the woman he’d been having an affair with, the affair that killed my daughter.”
Edeet! snorted again, her lips twisted so that she looked less like a bougie hotel owner and more like a viper. “Your daughter was a fool and she was weak. That’s why she killed herself, not because of us.”
Jane and I both winced. “Ouch,” Jane said. “Rude. And still not an explanation for the diamond.”
“The stone was a family heirloom, passed from mother to daughter upon the daughter’s marriage,” Kitsy said, still holding Aisha’s hand. “When Julia died, I asked Jack to have it back. I even offered him money. He said he wouldn’t take a dime from me, that he knew how much the stone meant to Julia and to me. He was so nice about it.” Kitsy shook her head angrily, although I think the anger was as much at herself as at Jack. “Why did I believe him? He gave me a knock-off he’d had made. A beautiful fraud, just like the man himself. And his whore,” Kitsy added, causing Edeet! to hiss like a cat.
“I didn’t realize it was fake at the time,” Kitsy continued, ignoring Edeet!. “I was so distraught over Julia’s death, I couldn’t even look at it. I put the stone away and forgot about it, until Aisha came into my life.”
The look Kitsy gave the girl was so full of love and longing, and the hand she reached to brush the girl’s cheek was trembling. “Everyone said I was silly adopting at my age, but Aisha has been everything to me. And I wanted to give her what was hers. When she started her senior year, I took the stone out for the first time in decades. I only really looked at it then. And I knew I’d been conned.”
Edeet! was glaring at Kitsy and Aisha with unconcealed rage. It wasn’t the face of someone who’d pulled a successful con job. Kitsy pointed at Edeet!. “That woman’s jerk of a husband killed my baby girl, then stole our family heirloom so he could buy this monstrosity and keep his whore happy.”
Aisha flinched as her mother railed against Jack and Edeet!, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else.
“You know nothing,” Edeet! snarled as I directed another swell of power at her, wanting to hear her side of the story. “Nothing! You want to hear why Jack would not part with your precious stone? Because it was Julia’s. Because he never forgave himself for what she did. Because he loved her more than me!” Edeet! clapped a hand over her mouth, obviously shocked to have admitted so much. Kitsy looked both surprised and smug.
“Keep talking,” I told Edeet!. “What happened to the ring?”
“I sold it,” she said, leering at us, her face rigid with her manic smile. “I stole it from the safety deposit box he thought was a secret and I sold it. We’d bought this place years ago and never made enough money to truly fix it up. So I stole the ring and sold it. Soon after, my aunt died and I told him the money was an inheritance. He never questioned me.” Edeet!’s smile lost its manic edge but still split her face. She leaned back as if sated on a fine repast.
Kitsy looked liked she’d been pole-axed.
“And then you came back here, after you realized the ring was a fake?” Jane said to Kitsy, looking over the woman nervously. We didn’t want Kitsy to go the way of Jack. But Edeet! was the one to answer.
“Yes. I didn’t know who she was, of course. She’s aged so much,” Edeet! gave the older woman a dismissive gesture that made Jane’s fists clench. “But Jack recognized her.”
“And how did you end up working here?” Jane asked, turning to Aisha.
“When Mom realized about the ring, she looked up this place on the Internet. They’d posted an ad hiring a chambermaid for the summer. She made me apply.”
“What were you arguing about the day we arrived?” I asked her.
“Jack caught me snooping,” Aisha said, casting a look mixed with sadness and irritation at her mother.
“I knew Jack would never hand over the diamond. And that if I confronted him, he’d pull another stunt like that one,” Kitsy said, pointing at the fake ring lying on the carpet. “Aisha would be our ‘in.’ She’d figure out what happened to the real ring, and then I’d confront him.”
“You little spy,” Edeet! said, glaring at Aisha. “We trusted you!”
Aisha looked miserable. “You’re the one who stole from my mother.”
“Bullsheet,” Edeet! said. “I stole from my husband, who deserved it for keeping that money from me all those years.”
“So Jack really didn’t sell the ring himself?” Kitsy’s voice was small.
“Tell her the truth,” I said to Edeet!. She glowered, but the magic made her do as I said.
“He cherished the thing. He couldn’t look at it, of course, because it reminded him too much of Julia. But he would never get rid of it, he said. Even when our plumbing blew up and I had to sell all my jewelry, he kept that stupid diamond.”
“He really did love Julia?” Kitsy looked a little green around the gills at that revelation.
“Of course he did,” Edeet! snapped. “Jack is one of those awful men who can love you with all his heart even as he’s fucking another woman.”
“So how did he die, exactly?” Jane asked. “I know it was a heart attack, but was that heart attack helped along?”
All four people sat mute and I sent out another wave of magical influence. “C’mon. Fess up.”
“He found out the ring was gone,” blurted Edeet!, just as Aisha said, “He was dead when we found him.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Jane, with a predatory little smile. She turned to Edeet!. “You first.”
Edeet! looked miserable, but she kept talking. “When Kitsy showed up, wearing that stupid fake ring and acting like she was just visiting, Jack felt terrible. He told me she deserved to have the real ring, that he’d felt that way for years, and here was his opportunity. He told me he was going to go get the real diamond and use Kitsy’s visit as a way to swap out rings.
“I tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn’t listen. He went to the bank and…he found out the ring was gone.”
“And he figured out that you stole it?” I asked.
A fat tear rolled down Edeet!’s cheek. Whether or not it was a crocodile’s tear was anyone’s guess.
“The fool ha
d put it in our shared safety deposit box, so all I had to do was sign for it and it was mine. But the signature was there. He knew.”
“And he figured out where your ‘inheritance’ really came from?” Jane asked.
She nodded but never looked back up, instead keeping her head bowed. “The signature was dated.”
“So the ring was gone and the money as well. No chance in getting any of it back,” Jane said. “Did he come home and confront you?”
“Yes,” Edeet! said, staring down at her shoes. “He knew the truth, but I think he wanted me to deny it. Or to discover I still somehow had the ring, that maybe there had been an inheritance. But I was so furious with him when he confronted me, I told him everything. He should never have kept that ring from me in the first place! We struggled for so long, and we had the means to make everything better right there at our fingertips. He was supposed to be my husband, not Julia’s! She was dead!”
“And he didn’t take that very well?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Mais non. He…he just keeled over. It was horrible. He’d told me his heart, it was getting better. Or I never would have said anything…”
“Sure you wouldn’t,” Jane said. “What did you do when he keeled over?”
“I knew to call the 911, of course. But by the time I found my phone, my dear Jack was dead.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“I was very distraught. I went and poured a glass of sherry, and I must have fainted.”
Jane and I glanced at one another, and I noticed that Aisha and Kitsy looked equally horrified. Fainted my ass, I thought. Her emotionally unfaithful husband had died and to make sure he damn well stayed dead, she’d not called anyone to help.
“How did he end up naked?” Jane turned to Aisha, who blanched.
“We searched him,” she said, looking miserable.
“As in strip searched him?” Jane said incredulously.
“It was my idea,” Kitsy said, trying to maintain her dignity even as she admitted to tearing the clothes off a dead man. “We’d searched everywhere by that point. We figured he might have a clue on his person—a key, a combination, something.
“So you stripped him down to his underwear and just kept stripping?” I thought that was overkill, really.
The two women exchanged a glance. “No,” Kitsy said. “It turned out Jack didn’t wear any underwear, or we would have left him in those. All we did was go through his clothes, his wallet, all of that stuff. Then when we realized nothing was there, we left. We would have put his clothes back on, but we heard someone coming.”
“Good of you,” Jane said. “Now, how on earth did he get into our bed?”
“Pretty lady,” Timmy said out of the blue, looking at Jane. “Jack likes pretty ladies.”
Jane frowned at Timmy, then smoothed out her expression when he began to look scared.
“Timmy, can you tell us how your brother ended up in the bed I was sleeping in?”
“Okay,” said Timmy, looking at his hands, which he was wringing almost manically.
“Can you use your words?” Jane asked.
“Jack was naked. Shouldn’t be naked. He was cold. Needed blanket. And Jack likes pretty ladies.”
Jane leaned forward, smiling sweetly at Timmy. “Did you pick Jack up, Timmy?”
Timmy nodded. “Took him to bed, to be warm, took him to pretty lady.”
“Why didn’t you take him to me?” Edeet! whined, more tears streaming down her face.
“Jack like pretty ladies,” Timmy told her solemnly. “Not yelly ladies.”
“I don’t yell!” Edeet! yelled.
“So that’s it,” I said to Jane. “Jack really did die of natural causes, although he was helped along by the discovery of his wife’s duplicity. But he was a bit of a shit, really.”
“What are you planning to do now?” Jane said, narrowing her eyes at Edeet!. Under the power of Jane’s glamour, the Frenchwoman had to admit what she wouldn’t have otherwise.
“First get rid of this idiot,” she said, pointing at Timmy. “Then run the hotel as I have been. Jack was useless, really, so not much changes. I may take a young lover or two, but keep them in their place as they’ll undoubtedly try to use me for my money.”
“Nice,” Jane said. Then I felt her power really roll. “Except that you’re not going to fire Timmy. You’re going to use a nice chunk of your profits to make sure he gets into a really good assisted-living program, full of people who will appreciate him.”
“Take care of Timmy,” Edeet! intoned, sounding like a zombie as Jane’s magic carved new pathways through the woman’s brain.
“And you’re going to save up for something pretty to give Aisha as a new heirloom. After all, it was her diamond that was your nest egg. You owe her.”
“I owe her,” Edeet! said.
“And you,” she said, turning to Kitsy. “You’re going to drop this whole thing. You did give the ring over to your daughter, who could give it to whomever she saw fit. It sucks that it ended up getting lost but it is only a thing. Your daughter is more important, and you shouldn’t be sending her out on crazy spy missions just because you’re ruffled about a material object. Got it?”
Kitsy nodded. “Aisha is more important.”
“And you,” she said, turning to Aisha. “Don’t let your mother push you around. You seem like a nice girl. Keep at it.”
With that, Jane abruptly tied up her glamour by shifting subjects. “We’ve just had a very nice conversation about the weather and nothing else, haven’t we?”
All four people blinked at us, although Timmy kept blinking way after everyone else began slowly nodding, accepting Jane’s new explanation for why we were all sitting around the fireplace together.
“Yes, that was a very nice conversation,” Edeet! said, standing. Then she turned to Timmy and pursed her lips, undoubtedly “remembering” her new mission. “Come along, Timmy. We need to discuss your future.”
She gave us all a tight smile and went on her way, leaving Kitsy and Aisha holding hands.
“Time to go home,” Aisha said, and Kitsy nodded.
“Yes, dear. Time to go home.”
The two women left, their glamour-befuddled brains not remembering to say goodbye to us. We were fine with that.
Because we were one step behind them, headed to our own room.
Slick with sweat, our bodies slid from one another as we flopped on our backs, panting.
“You let me do the thing anyway,” I said, once I could finally speak. “Even though we cheated and used a glamour.”
“‘Let you’ my ass,” Jane said, fanning herself. “I’ve wanted to do that with you since I met you. I just like to make you work for things.”
I closed my eyes, pleasure still tracing gentle fingertips along my skin, but now they were followed by another tracing of fatigue.
Jane settled against me, all soft breasts and hips and belly, and I pulled her close.
“I’ll give you twenty minutes for a disco nap,” she said, her breath warm in my ear. “And then we’re doing my thing. You’d better be ready, or else.”
“Or else what?” I rumbled, cracking one eye open at her.
She smiled at me: the predatory, playful grin of my favorite half-selkie girl.
“Or else I’m torturing you, sexually, for hours on end, until you can service me right.”
I grinned back at her, threading my fingers through her hair and kissing her thoroughly. Then I flipped her, loving how her hips cradled mine, her arms encircled me, and I was home.
“I love you, Mrs. Barghest,” I said teasingly.
“And I love you too, Mr. True,” she replied, staring deep into my eyes. “And I will love you forever and ever and ever.”
I teared up, hearing that. I knew she worried about us. About forever, or however long our “ever” was. But we were both ornery people and she was choosing to love me, just as I chose to love her.
That’s all any two peopl
e can do: choose to love each, again and again, every damned day till they drop.
“Now get to pleasuring me, or I’ll take back everything I said and replace you with a troop of circus tumblers,” Jane said.
I snorted, but did as I was told. With Jane, I was always happy to oblige.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicole D. Peeler writes urban fantasy for Orbit Books and, in her spare time, is an associate professor at Seton Hill University, where she co-directs their MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. Having recently finished the final book of her award-winning Jane True series, she is looking forward to the upcoming publication of Jinn and Juice, the first book in a series about a cursed jinni living in Pittsburgh. Nicole also lives in Pittsburgh, although she’s neither cursed nor a jinni. You can find out more about her at http://nicolepeeler.com.
BOOKS BY AUTHOR
Jinn and Juice
Jane True Series (in series order)
Tempest Rising
Tracking the Tempest
Tempest's Legacy
Eye of the Tempest
Tempest's Fury
Tempest Reborn
And don't forget her Sookieverse Story, in Dead But Not Forgotten!
Turn the page for an excerpt from Nicole Peeler’s newest book JINN AND JUICE!
Trip hissed at me as I leapt over her and Trap. The twin spider-wraiths were currently conjoined at the waist, their legs splaying around them as they prepared for their act.
I didn't respond, since I was in fully panicked-fleeing mode. Trip and Trap, after all, couldn't help me. Neither could Trey, or Big Bertha, or Charlie or any of my other friends. Not unless they ripped that fucking Magi's tongue out before he could speak. For Magi he certainly was, his eyes Flaring to my Fire.
I heard crashing behind me as Trap cried out. "No humans backstage!"
The Magi ignored the spider-wraiths, his footsteps closing in behind me. But he hadn't Called yet, and I used my Fire to propel me forward, pushing me toward Purgatory's stage entrance and the street. There, I could hopefully put enough distance between me and the Magi for Pittsburgh's steel-stained environment to help me hide.
The Hound of Bar Harborville (A Jane True Short Story) (Trueniverse Book 1) Page 5
