by Jenn Bennett
“You didn’t do anything wrong, baby,” Rose said.
Lon stared straight ahead, eyes on the road. “I’m not mad at you.”
That seemed to calm Jupe down a little. After awhile he said, “Do you think she’s really sober?”
No one answered. Adella was still angry, and like Lon, was keeping herself tightly wound. Mr. and Mrs. Holiday glanced at each other as if they were wondering whether they should jump in. I never knew them to stay quiet about anything, so it was disconcerting that they were holding back.
After a few moments, Rose finally said, “I don’t know.” She put her arm around Jupe’s shoulders and pulled him closer, stroking his arm in one of those grandmotherly ways. I never knew my grandparents, but I always fantasized that they’d be that way, kind and comforting.
It was weird that a few hours ago, I was still angry with this woman. Now I saw her in a different light. God only knew what she’d had to deal with when it came to Yvonne. She could have just let Lon and Jupe slip out of her life. But she stuck around. Jupe thought she was the best thing since sliced bread. So she was a little stubborn. Maybe I’d be stubborn too if I was in her shoes.
“I want to believe her,” Jupe admitted after a while. “Does that make me a sucker? Every time I believe her, she lets me down.”
“Me too,” Rose answered. “Me too.”
Lon remained silent for the remainder of the ride. He was dark and stormy and circled by a solid stone wall and a moat filled with snapping crocodiles. Completely unreachable. I hated that Yvonne had that effect on him. I desperately wanted to talk to him in private, but when we got home, Lon asked the Holidays to take Foxglove out back with Jupe. Once he was out of earshot, we stood on the front walkway with the Giovannis.
“How did you do it, Rose?” Lon asked.
“Do what?”
Lon’s eyes narrowed. “You know damn well what I mean. Resist her knack. How did you do it?”
Rose pushed her glasses up. If I had to guess, I’d say she was almost embarrassed. “Oh, all right.” She sighed theatrically, then reached inside her purse and pulled out an object that fit in her palm. It was metal. It glowed softly with Heka.
“A charm?” I said.
Rose was embarrassed. “Just a little one.”
“Mama!” Adella said, peering into her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. “I bought it from a magick shop in Portland. The woman who owns it is a witch, and she said she bought it from an estate sale. She wasn’t sure if it would work. But I had it on me last time I saw Yvonne and it worked . . . well, like a charm.”
“Can I see it?” I asked
She handed it to me. “It” was a silver signet ring, the band almost worn through in the back. The front was a flat hammered circle with a magical sigil engraved in the middle. “This is a variation of Solomon’s Seal.”
Lon squinted at it as I turned it in my fingers. “I’ll be damned. I think you’re right.”
“And just what does that mean?” Adella asked.
“King Solomon supposedly had a ring that allowed him to control demons and talk to animals. Whoever made this seems to have adapted it for use on Earthbounds.”
“That’s why I couldn’t hear your emotions when Yvonne showed up,” Lon said.
“When I saw her walk onto the patio, I grabbed the ring from my purse. It only works if it’s touching your skin. That’s what the witch told me, anyway.”
Lon was astonished. “Damn, Rose. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent thumbing through old grimoires trying to find something that would do this?”
“Believe me, I wish I’d had it years ago. More than that, I wish I knew someone who could just get rid of her knack once and for all.” She slid a sly glance my way. “Do I know someone who could?”
“Me? Christ, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a spell that could do that. Plus she’s got—” I gave Lon a questioning look. He told me that, like the Holidays, they knew about the transmutation spell. Yvonne was fond of showing off, apparently.
“She’s got magick in her already,” Lon finished for me.
Magick I never wanted to experience. Her regular knack was powerful enough.
“That would have to be reversed first, I think, and . . .” My words trailed off as I thought about it. Could I? If I could slow time, then maybe I could do this, too. But so much could go wrong. It was like performing a surgery you’ve never done before. Or that’s what I imagined, anyway. Besides, there was no way Yvonne would ever agree to such a thing, so what was the point of thinking about it?
“Just a thought,” Rose said.
I handed the ring back.
“What I’m dying to know is what you heard,” Adella said to Lon. “Spill it. Was she lying about any of it?”
Lon glanced around at all of us. My nerves were jumping, buzzing with dread.
“She was sincere.”
Godammit. I knew it was selfish, but my heart still dropped.
Lon’s fingers grazed the back of my neck. “Being sincere in a moment doesn’t mean lasting change.”
“He’s right about that,” Adella murmured.
Rose sighed. “I’m going to the hotel to talk to her.”
“Mama—”
“I want to know what her plan is. I’m not going to let her spoil Christmas for Jupe.”
“I thought you expected me do that,” I joked lamely. A second after it was out of my mouth, I wondered if it was too soon. But she waved her hand dismissively, almost as if she was embarrassed.
Adella hoisted her purse higher up on her shoulder. “Here’s the difference. If Yvonne shows up for Christmas, there’s a good chance she’ll put everyone in a foul mood. And apparently the only way you could do that is by not showing up, because all Jupe did today was whine that you weren’t with us.”
Ah, crap. I was getting verklempt again. It was like some sort of sensitive housewife had taken over my body and was sitting around watching Lifetime movies and Hallmark commercials.
“So you’re stuck with us now,” Rose said. “Which means that Yvonne is your problem as much as she is ours. Be prepared to play defense if she’s planning on showing up Christmas Day. Legally, she has the right. But I’ve got this ring now, which means for once in my life, I’ve got the upper hand, and I plan on using it. You with us?”
The three of them looked at me expectantly, as if it was the most serious request in the world. As if they were asking me to get a pitchfork and join them in pursuit of the village monster. And at that point, to be honest, they probably could’ve asked me to murder Mother Teresa.
I gave Rose a decisive chin nod. “I’m your girl.”
• • •
I briefly worried that Lon would want to go along to talk with Yvonne, too. But when Adella relented to drive her mother—“I’ll wait in the parking lot while you talk to her,” Adella told Rose—he didn’t even act as if he’d considered it. I asked him if he was okay. He took a moment to answer, but when he said he was, I believed him.
So while Adella drove off with Rose to the Village to talk with Yvonne at her hotel, the Holidays walked back to their cabin. And after I changed into a less salacious outfit, a T-shirt and yoga pants—which had never undergone a single minute of yoga, just for the record—Lon and I made our way across the driveway.
Connected to the main house, Lon’s three-car garage would make a perfectly nice studio apartment, with polished floors and central air and a couch salvaged from his parents’ place. I’d napped on that couch once, and I have to say it was way more comfortable than Kar Yee’s. It was also where we found Jupe, sitting cross-legged as he squinted at a book of Pontiac engine diagrams. An old TV sat upon a workbench to one side, tuned to a channel that was showing The Nightmare Before Christmas. This was Jupe’s little home-away-from-home, as he’d claimed the first empty bay as a hangout area, and his rusted-out ’67 GTO sat on blocks in the second bay. The bay at the far end housed Lon’s silver Audi sports c
oupe, rarely driven.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked, plopping down on one side of him.
“I can’t figure out what this is.” He held up a rusted metal disk to Lon. “I found it under the car, like it had fallen off of something.”
Lon inspected it for a few moments. “I think it’s part of the A/C. Four hoses fit inside those holes to draw in fresh air.”
“Oooh. I’ll put it in the pile with the compressor junk.”
Lon handed it back and sat down on the opposite side of him.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Depends,” he said, turning to Lon. “Am I in trouble for talking to her?”
“I told you no already.”
“Just making sure. Where’s Gramma and Auntie?”
“They went to talk to her.”
“Oh.” He stretched out long legs and tossed the manual onto the floor.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Jupe.”
He shrugged. “I know. But it’s not wrong to hope. That’s what you’ve said before—not about her, but it still applies, right?”
Lon made a frustrated noise.
“What do you think, Cady?” Jupe asked, long-lashed eyes looking up to mine.
“God, I don’t know.” What was I supposed to say here? “I guess I’ve heard too many stories about her. She makes me feel angry for the two of you, and a little jealous, too.”
His nose wrinkled up. “Why would you be jealous?”
God, was I really allowing myself to be dragged into this? “Because she’s beautiful and—” And what? What was I going to say? That, hey, your father probably fucked her brains out God knows how many times over the years? He’d been in crazy in love with her, and—unlike Lon and I with our you’re-my-favorite-person code—the two of them probably professed their undying supermodel-photographer love, before everything went bad. They’d slept in the same bed, and maybe he even cooked dinner for her, like he did for me.
And, then, the big one: she gave birth to you. Because of that, Lon and Yvonne shared a bond that Lon and I didn’t have. How does a person compete with a couple’s history that would never be left in the past?
But I didn’t say any of that. I just said, “I’m jealous because you both loved her.”
“You don’t understand,” Jupe said. “She’s messed up, bad.” He tapped his temple. “Wrong in the head.”
“I know,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and sighed. I looked across his skinny frame and caught Lon staring at me, concern tightening his brow.
I picked up Jupe’s hand and slid my palm against his, spreading out his fingers to line up with mine. “I just want you to be happy. I think your dad does, too. That’s all.”
“I am. It’s just . . . hard to explain,” he finally finished.
I nodded.
He threaded slender fingers through mine. “You’re staying home tonight, right?”
“Yes.” Oh, yes. I was. If I’d had any doubts about that before Yvonne walked in the restaurant, they were long gone. I might never let Lon out of my sight again.
Lon ran his palm over Jupe’s forehead, pushing back curls. “What do you say we go watch TV in the living room? That crack in your screen is driving me nuts.”
Jupe glanced at the old television set, where Jack the Pumpkin King was announcing his plans to usurp Sandy Claws. “You said that crack added character.”
“I lied.” Lon slapped his son’s leg and stood up. “Come on. If we hurry, we can watch something R-rated before Gramma comes back and stops us.”
“What about Black Christmas?” Jupe said with a big cheesy smile.
“Only if Cady says yes.”
Jupe turned his eager smile on me. Like I was going to say no to anything at this point. “Is this a horror movie?”
“It’s made by the same guy who made A Christmas Story. It’s great!”
Lon crossed his arms over his chest. “And . . .” he prodded.
“And it’s a slasher flick from 1974. Sorority house murders.” He waggled his brows.
“Go find it and meet us in the living room.”
“Woo-hoo!” Jupe sailed off the couch and exited the garage with Foxglove running alongside. For the moment, everything was temporarily patched up in his teenage mind. And I was okay with that. I wished like hell a movie could do the same for me.
“I hate to bring it up, but I still need to call Hajo,” I said to Lon as he helped me off the couch.
“Hajo,” he repeated, as if it were a dirty word. But I could tell by the look on his face that he was a little relieved to change the subject. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood to rehash Yvonne anymore; I damn sure wasn’t. “Go on and get it over with,” he said. “Maybe the boy can actually help us out.”
“He’s my age, you know. Not a boy.”
“Don’t remind me.” He slung his arm around my shoulders. “And if he won’t talk about it on the phone, try to arrange a meeting with him in the afternoon.”
A drug dealer and user, Hajo hated talking about anything remotely illegal on the phone. “Why afternoon?”
“Because Merrimoth’s funeral is tomorrow morning, and I should probably go.”
A cool, dark anger prickled my thoughts. “Why? Have you been talking to Dare?”
“Nope. Not a word,” he said. “I’m only going because it’s the right thing to do. You don’t have to come with me.”
Maybe not right, exactly, but paying respect to someone you knew is normal. But me? Paying respect to someone I had a hand in killing? Not so much. I thought about it as I left a message for Hajo and headed back into the house. Normal or not, I damn sure wasn’t going to let Lon go to the funeral alone. Just because I’d quit working for Dare didn’t mean I had to avoid every demon in the Hellfire Club. Nearly impossible in La Sirena, anyway. And it was part of Lon’s past, whether I liked it or not. Part of mine, too.
And I suppose, after pondering all this, it was only natural that I had nightmares that night.
At first I dreamed I was attending Merrimoth’s funeral, a rainy and gray graveside service in a crumbling cemetery. Most of the attendees had blue and green halos that glowed beneath the cover of their umbrellas. But when I looked around at the gravestones, I noticed sinister occult symbols chiseled into the rain-darkened granite instead of names.
I stepped to the front of the crowd and discovered that it wasn’t a preacher leading the service, but my father, dressed in black ritual robes.
The grave opened at my feet. They weren’t burying a body. They were hoisting up an old casket. And when they pried open the moldering lid, I stared down at my mother’s rotting skeleton.
Her arm moved. One bony finger traced an invisible sigil in the air. I shivered, feeling a current of strong, dark magick undulating in the air between us, and watched as her muscles and organs grew between her bones. Veins and arteries appeared, filling with blood. Her heart pumped. Her skin knit itself together, spreading pale and thin over her Phoenix-like body.
Blank eyes filled the dead sockets inside her skull. They stared up at me, looking like wobbly, slick eggs. And when her mouth opened to speak, I screamed and woke up in a cold sweat.
Most people would agree that funerals aren’t cheery occasions. But when we made it to David Merrimoth’s the next morning, it was the polar opposite of my dream: the atmosphere was more like an awards ceremony than a memorial service.
Cars packed the sunny parking lot of the largest church in La Sirena. Every important Earthbound in a hundred-mile vicinity had shown up, dressed to the nines. I smiled at them; they stared at my silver halo. Did any of these people realize I was the last person to see Merrimoth alive?
“You have nothing to feel guilty about, so cut that out,” Lon said in a low voice.
“I don’t feel guilty.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You didn’t kill Merrimoth. He did that himself.”
Dammit. Okay, maybe I did feel guilty, but it was so mixe
d up with a thousand other negative feelings—my creepy-ass dream about my mother, concern for Kar Yee, the stress of getting the bar fixed back up, the disappointment in losing Telly yesterday afternoon . . . the meeting I’d scheduled with Hajo later that night.
And Yvonne.
The Giovannis came back well after midnight from talking with Yvonne, and their pronouncement was that Yvonne was more lucid and humble than she’d been in years.
Good for her. Truly.
But you’ll have to excuse me if I wasn’t turning cartwheels and breaking out champagne.
Anyway, it just soured my already anxious mood. And how Lon’s empathic knack managed to hone in on “guilt over Merrimoth” inside my woebegone stew of emotional negativity was beyond me. I sighed dramatically.
Lon hit the button to set the alarm on the silver Audi. To be honest, I preferred his mud-spattered SUV with Jupe’s comics lining the floorboards. Or maybe it’s just that I hated the fact that every time I’d been a passenger inside the Audi, we were going to some event connected to the Hellfire Club.
“Chin up,” he said. “This won’t last long.”
One warm, strong hand wrapped around mine as he led me toward La Sirena All Souls, a sprawling Mission style stucco-and-cedar church surrounded by gently curving palm trees stretching above its terra cotta roof. My heels clicked against rough mosaic tiles that circled a star-shaped fountain in front of the entrance.
Lon wore a perfectly tailored black suit that revealed teasing outlines of hard muscle in his arms and thighs as he moved. I stole a glance up at him, all golden and chiseled, green eyes squinting into California sun, glinting honey hair that kissed the tops of his shoulders. He looked radiant and otherworldly, like a painting of some mythical demigod, crowned with his green and gold halo.
God, but he was a beautiful man. And he treated me like I was both a goddess and his equal. Every morning I woke up in his arms, like this morning—hallelujah!—I was grateful, because how lucky was I? He was a freaking catch.
And you know what? So was I. According to him, he saw something good in me the first time we’d met, but maybe I was just starting to realize it, too. It wasn’t that long ago I wrestled with insecurities about our age difference, but even though we liked to tease each other, our May-December scandal didn’t bother me.
