Midsummer Curse

by Megan Derr

  But he rather liked feeling Ferdy's eyes on him as he stripped piece by piece, the way the scent of lust spiked, and he was very sore and disappointed he could do nothing about it at present.

  Shifting, he then barked for Ferdy to open the door. Free of the house, he charged outside and sprinted for the car where Kerry was still trapped. Scrambling onto the roof, he barked and barked, making Kerry jump and flinch.

  Then he leapt down and rejoined Ferdy, and they continued their walk into town.

  *~*~*

  The first place they stopped was a small diner that was so small town Brayton wanted to start putting together a checklist just to see if the town actually met all the cliché requirements. Their waitress was a perky little thing who immediately started to drive him crazy. Was all that bouncing the result of too many drugs or too much sugar? He could never tell the difference.

  "What would you like?" she finally asked, almost seeming like she was out of breath.

  "Usual for me," Ferdy said.

  "Burger and fries. Medium. Water to drink. Thanks, darlin'." When she was gone, Brayton asked, "So what's the usual?"

  "Uh—chili. Bill, the cook, makes it extra spicy for me."

  "You like spicy food?"

  Ferdy nodded. "Yeah. My uncle, he traveled a lot before he met my aunt. Um, like you, I guess, but he traveled into Asia and all a lot. He became really fond of the spicy food overseas. He liked Mexican and Cajun, too. All of it, really. At our house, even breakfast was often spicy."

  "Cajun, huh? Mama will have to make you her gumbo, then. She learned it from a woman who joined her pack years before mama left it to be with pop."

  "Sounds good," Ferdy said with a smile.

  "She'll be pleased as anything to hear it. Pop and I can't eat it without crying like babies."

  Ferdy burst out laughing. "You don't like spicy?"

  "Not as such," Brayton replied. "A plate of wings here and there will do me just fine." He grinned when Ferdy laughed again and fought an urge to kiss him. He suspected no one would give a damn, this being Crazy Land, but no need to create a spectacle. Instead he shifted gears, back to the matter at hand. "So did you know her at all, baby?"

  "Joni, you mean? Not really. She had this old Ford clunker I fixed a couple of times, and she always wanted to pay, uh, in services? But it was only those couple of times, and I was swamped with work, so I didn't pay much attention past assuring her she didn't have to pay anything, in any way."

  Brayton frowned. "Seems like she was good at flying under the radar."

  All too often, though, such people did. People didn't notice the dregs of society much, not until they did something that didn't mesh with that lowest-rung lifestyle. It was nothing people meant to do, exactly; it was just the way it played.

  "Whatever happened to that old clunker, I wonder," Brayton asked aloud.

  "Dunno," Ferdy replied. "If it had been left abandoned somewhere, it would have been brought to me, but I guess we all naturally assumed she drove it out of town."

  "She didn't though," Brayton mused, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. "Five years later, I doubt much of it's left, but it must be somewhere."

  "Do you think we could find it?" Ferdy asked doubtfully.

  Brayton sighed. "No. Sure would be nice, though, to see it sitting pretty as you please in the killer's yard."

  Ferdy looked at him in amusement, which pleased Brayton far too much. He liked Ferdy loose and easy. He could not wait to see what he was like after being thoroughly fucked.

  Seeming to sense something of his thoughts, Ferdy flushed and looked down at the scuffed table top. Brayton kicked his leg lightly, causing Ferdy to glance up again. "So, baby," he drawled, "I never did get a good look at your bedroom—"

  "Food's up!" their waitress said abruptly, depositing their plates and drinks in a flurry of clatters and snapping gum and bouncing. "Anything else you need?"

  "No," Brayton said. "We're perfect, thanks, hon."

  By the time she finally left, the mood was gone. Brayton bit into his burger, sulking.

  Ferdy smiled fleetingly, looking at Brayton briefly before focusing on his chili. The way he ate it, Brayton had a hard time believing it was spicy—except Mama ate her spicy food the same way, and he'd learned the hard way that meant it was hotter than any sane person should want his food.

  He was more than content with his own burger and fries, which were the best he'd had in a long time.

  "So where are we going next?" Ferdy asked.

  Brayton finished chewing a couple of fries then said, "That wolfsbane wasn't dime store quality. It was high grade stuff; the sort of potency favored by witches, alchemists, hunters—that ilk. It also was relatively fresh. Bane is like any other herb; over time it begins to lose its potency. Whoever set those traps is also maintaining them; he didn't just set them and walk away. That bane was set or reset very recently, within the past few days I'd say. So, we need to find who sells it—they can and will tell us whose been buying it."

  "Hmm," Ferdy said, head dipping as he thought, still holding the spoon that was, in turn, still in his mouth. After a moment, he pulled the spoon out and set it back in his mostly empty bowl. "Mr. Lester owns the drugstore; he sells that sort of thing. But, uh, Old Lady West grows most of the herbs and all that he uses to stock his shelves. Maybe all of them. She'd have the better stuff, right? Cause I don't think he sells anything too strong, in case kids get hold of it."

  "That sound 'bout right. Where does this Old Lady West live?"

  "Uh—east side of town. I think she moved to Sycamore Street last spring. I fixed her stove when it broke after she moved in."

  "Guess we'd better head that way then," Brayton said, frowning at his empty plate, wondering if there was any way to justify staying for dessert.

  Ferdy laughed. "Umm. The pies here are really, really good."

  Brayton smiled sheepishly. "How'd you guess?"

  "I've never met a wolf who wasn't perpetually hungry."

  Brayton narrowed his eyes. "Just how many wolves have you known? And how many in the biblical sense?"

  Ferdy choked on his soda and started coughing. "What—" He glared. "None of your business! I'm a gremlin. People ask me to repair things everywhere I go. After my aunt and uncle died, I traveled for a few years. One bad winter, I shacked up with a pack and did repair work for room and board."

  "Oh?” Brayton said, a hint of growl in the word.

  "I—so I got along with one. For a little while. But he found me annoying too, in the end," Ferdy replied, voice growing smaller and smaller as he spoke. He asked tightly, "Does it really matter?"

  Brayton immediately felt contrite. "No, baby. I'm just being possessive."

  Ferdy looked at him, hurt. "I'm not the kind to cheat or anything."

  "Trust me, Itty-bitty, I know that. Got nothing do with it. I didn't say I didn't trust you. I said I'm possessive. Let's say you went home one day and saw someone had messed with your tools. They were all there, all fine. Nothing to be alarmed about at all; whoever had used them had taken care of them and everything. No reason to be upset. Would you be upset anyway?"

  For a moment, Ferdy actually looked angry. Then he seemed abruptly to realize what he was doing and promptly flushed. "Uh---but those are tools. I'm, uh—"

  "A million times more important and mine," Brayton said. "No one is allowed to touch you but me."

  Too much, too soon, too fast, his brain screamed at him. Ferdy was already skittish—he'd run screaming into the night if Brayton kept shoving the mate thing at him.

  But, to his everlasting shock, Ferdy only buried the faintest of sweet little smiles in his glass of soda.

  The waitress returned then, once again with the worst timing on earth, and asked if they'd like desert. "I hear the place had good pie," Brayton said.

  She beamed. "Today we've got apple, sweet potato, and shoe-fly."

  "Sweet potato. Thanks, honey."

  "Sure. Anything for you, Ferdy?"


  "Apple."

  Brayton smiled until she was gone, then looked at Ferdy, who had a bit of a pout going suddenly. "What's wrong, baby?"

  "Stop calling me that," Ferdy said.

  "No."

  "Do you ever call anyone by their names?" Ferdy asked. "Or do you always call everyone honey and darling and baby and stuff?"

  Brayton stared at him, startled—then realization dawned, and he gave Ferdy a slow grin. "Southern thing, Itty-bitty. My neighbor called me 'baby duck' all my life. But you're the only one I call baby."

  Ferdy scowled at his soda. "It's still not my name."

  Brayton just kept grinning, pleased as punch, until Effervescent Barbie brought their pie. "Thanks," he said, pointedly leaving off the 'darling' he'd have otherwise tacked on.

  She smiled then bounced off to torture another table. Ferdy made a face at him, but he was smiling faintly as he demolished his apple pie and ice cream.

  Maybe, Brayton thought, just maybe he wasn't moving too fast at all.

  He was still smiling when they paid up and left a few minutes later. On impulse, he grabbed Ferdy's hand and held fast, only continuing to smile when Ferdy looked at him in surprise. "So where' Sycamore?"

  "Uh—um—this way," Ferdy said and led the way through the small town, cheeks flushed most of the way to what proved to be a tidy little two story brick house on a street so postcard perfect Brayton rolled his eyes.

  "Was this town built according to some Guide to Building the Perfect Quaint and Picturesque Small Town?" Brayton demanded. "If it gets any sweeter, my teeth will rot."

  Ferdy coughed in a poor attempt at smothering his laughter. "I thought the same thing when I got here. I kept waiting for the punch line. But it, uh, really is like that here. Sally takes her territory seriously."

  "I so cannot wait to meet the plucky town sheriff," Brayton muttered. "If his last name is Taylor and his deputy is Barney, I'm going to lose it, though."

  "Uh—" Ferdy looked hopelessly lost by that comment. "His name is Kirby, actually. He's from the west coast. He's a witch."

  "Well, that's a relief," Brayton said, then fell silent as they reached the door.

  He lifted a hand to knock, reluctantly letting go of Ferdy's hand with a last squeeze. When the door opened, he was not at all surprised to see an old woman who smelled like roses and looked like she baked cookies every week for the kids at Sunday school.

  "Hullo, Ferdy," the woman said, looking surprised. "Been talking lots about you at bingo. Heard tell you tossed that loser out on his ear. ‘Bout time. And what have we here?" She lifted a pair of glasses from where they hung from a chain around her neck. "My, my, what a strapping fellow. He yours, Ferdy? You're a wolf, boy, or I'm not a day over eighty."

  Brayton smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I'm a wolf. I heard tell you're an expert on herbs, and I came to ask about wolfsbane."

  "I see," she said and unlocked her screen door. "Come on in, then, boys. I just made some coffee, though my doctor keeps telling me to stop drinking it. Bah! Doctors and priest, they think anything fun is bad for you."

  Brayton's smile widened into a grin. "Truer words were never spoken. Mama always said never trust a man who tells you to have no fun, nor a man who tells you to have nothing but fun."

  "Your mama sounds smart," West replied.

  "Smart as the sun is bright and three times as likely to burn me to a crisp," Brayton replied.

  West cackled, but the warm grin Ferdy gave him was far more pleasing.

  "Sit, sit," West ordered, motioning them to her kitchen table as she worked on the coffee and brought it all to the table with cream and sugar, other odds and ends. "My garden and work room are out back, if you need to see them. I do grow wolfsbane, of course, but the Sheriff knows I don't get up to any tomfoolery with that or any of my other plants. I'm very strict about who buys it, and few of them get it at its highest potency. But my wolfsbane was stolen two days ago—and this ain't the first time it's happened. Over the past year, I've had six different herbs stolen on a monthly basis. Me and the Sheriff, we've tried everything, but whoever the thief is, he's slippery."

  "And you haven't uncovered any clues as to who the culprit might be?" Brayton asked. That sounded as slippery and slimy as their clock tower killer. He snorted at that, just picturing the headline: Clock Tower Killer Strikes, Funeral Bells Ring.

  Hopefully they'd come up with one a bit more heartening, involving the killer being captured or killed. But it bothered him the killer could mask his scent, repeatedly steal herbs from the same woman—and he had no proof of that, but from the nature of the herbs, and the frequency with which the curses and other traps would have had to be renewed, it seemed probably. The bastard was crafty as a goblin, as the saying…

  As the saying went.

  Surely not.

  He turned to Ferdy. "Baby, when did you say Kerry and you got together?"

  "What—uh—" He fumbled at the serious expression on Brayton's face. "About a year ago."

  "Before or after you started working on the clock tower?"

  "Um—I don't really—no wait!" Ferdy looked pleased with himself. "I was only at the bar that night 'cause I'd promised to fix the freezer, and my hands ached from disassembling the clock work all day. Kerry—uh—offered me a ride home, when he saw how tired I was." He smiled bitterly.

  Brayton growled and brushed his knuckles along Ferdy's cheek, but kept his mind on business. "Ma'am, you said all this thieving started a year ago?"

  "Yes."

  "The clock tower repairs started roughly a year ago—specifically repairs on the clock itself. That's too close to the body for the killer to be comfortable. So he booby-trapped the place, kept the traps maintained, since moving it at that point would have been impossible."

  "You think Kerry killed her?" Ferdy asked. "But why?"

  "It's only a theory and one with all the stability of a frozen lake in April," Brayton replied. "It could crack at any moment."

  "Crafty as a goblin," West said, mouth set in a grim line. "That boy Kerry is wily as a fox, more so than most people think. If he wasn't, he wouldn't still be alive."

  Brayton worried his bottom lip as his mind raced. "But that would only explain the herbs he used in the booby traps. It doesn't explain the curse. An open curse is much more difficult to cast than a closed one. Few witches who do such things for a price would be willing to cast so difficult an open curse."

  "Maybe he cast it himself," West said.

  "Goblins don't do magic," Brayton said, shaking his head.

  West looked at him in gentle, amused reprimand. "They do if they're hobgoblins."

  Brayton went still at that, frowning deeply. "A hobgoblin." He pondered that.

  "But—if Kerry was a hobgoblin—" Ferdy shook his head. "He'd love that. I don't see why he'd keep it a secret. Hobgoblins are rare; only one goblin in thousands is born with the ability to do magic. If Kerry was a hobgoblin, he'd brag about it."

  Even before Ferdy had finished speaking, Brayton was shaking his head. "Not if it better suited his purposes to hide it. I could be shooting in the dark, but I think maybe our friend Kerry isn't quite as stupid an ass as we've been led to think—assuming all this supposition is correct."

  "But—" Ferdy fell silent and shook his head at Brayton's nudging. "Nothing."

  Though he wanted to push, Brayton let it slide for the moment. "Hate to run, ma'am, but I think we'd best get going. Thank you for the help and the wonderful coffee."

  West nodded. "Of course, boys. But you come back any time, I'll make you my gingersnaps."

  "Then I'll see you again for a certain, ma'am," Brayton said again, nodding.

  She smiled at him and patted his arm. "You're much better for our Ferdy."

  "Ma'am," Brayton drawled one last time, then got them outside and on their way again. "So what were you going to say in there, baby?"

  Ferdy shrugged, looking miserable. "If Kerry did it—why all the—why did he pretend to—"

  B
rayton dropped an arm over his shoulders, pulling Ferdy tight against his side. "You're well-liked. If I'm right about him, he probably thought it would be wiser to shack up with you, keep you distracted, until he could move the body."

  Ferdy laughed, sounding positively wretched. "So he pretended to be interested in me in hopes having him around would be more interesting than repairing the clock tower. I'm a sucker."

  Brayton snarled at that, stopping and snatching Ferdy close, kissing him until Ferdy went pliant and loose in his arms, all the unhappy tension melting away. "You're not a sucker, baby," Brayton rumbled. "Whatever you might be, you're mine now. The rest doesn't matter."

  Ferdy just shivered—then pushed up and kissed him again, a desperate sort of edge to it. Brayton growled in surprise, but went along gladly.

  "Better, Itty-bitty?" he asked when they eventually broke apart.

  "Yeah," Ferdy said. "Do you really think Kerry is behind this?"

  "I do like the sound of it, but I admit I'm biased. It would explain why he wants you back so bad."

  Ferdy's brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?"

  "He's probably trying to get close to you to break that curse so I'll go away again. Except now he knows that I won't be leaving so easily." Damn it. He really hoped they were wrong, and that they weren't dealing with a hobgoblin. If they were, and that hobgoblin was desperate to prevent their learning he was the killer…

  He could have just left the body and wiped away all traces. A hobgoblin could do that if given sufficient reason to go to that much trouble. So why set so many booby traps to hide the body of the village whore?

  It didn't really make sense. If he'd left well enough alone, the body would have been discovered, but the mystery likely never solved. Booby traps just pissed people off and drew their attention.

  Then again, if Carl hadn't been around to witness Ferdy's curse, no one would have called Brayton. Who knew what would have happened, then. Without a gremlin to repair it, the repairs would have come to a grinding halt until they found someone else who could do the work. That would have left Kerry plenty of time to finally move and destroy the body.

  Why did Kerry even give a damn, he wondered abruptly. If Kerry was the killer, wouldn't it be just as easy for him to pick up and leave? No doubt he was loathe to leave the comfort and familiarity of Midsummer, but better to go than stay and be tried for murder.