Dear Goddess. She’d missed this.
The one large window was filled with big pots of half-dead plants. She listened, waiting until she could hear their soft speech. They spoke through sound and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It wasn’t emotion or visions. It was almost…Life. They spoke through life.
She touched them with a soul finger. They turned toward her, their essence moving like a shadow of glittering light, leaving the husk of their green leaves behind. The air filled with whispers as they barraged her with questions. The smell of soil met her nose. What little water resided in the air touched the dirt, and the smell changed, became less harsh, more homey.
The plant closest to the TV was a common vine. A weed. Small green leaves, small purple leaves, small purple and silver striped leaves. Three plants. One pot. The vines reached toward her, the husks of the actual plant rising to meet the glowing life essence, touching her heart chakra. Gold light mixed with green.
And exploded.
When she opened her eyes, that plant had overtaken the window. Vines swept up the blinds, up the wall, finding the string of a tissue paper flower hanging from the ceiling.
She swallowed. She’d only intended for it to grow a little. Not overtake everything. Bloody hell.
Jack stood by the dining room as he stared in horror at the plant. He brought his beer mug to his lips and chugged his margarita.
“Feed me, Seymour,” Dexx said in his best Little Shop of Horrors voice.
Tony’s eyes widened, his mouth rounded. He blinked his gaze back toward Paige. “I thought you were a demon summoner.”
She shrugged. “I’m a witch first, and that’s just my favorite party trick.” Liar. “What about you? Vampire. What can you do?”
He shook out his fingers and released a breath. He resituated in his chair, then chuckled. “This is a little weird, isn’t it?”
Paige shrugged. “Not really. Guys, this is the world we’re making.”
“What happens if we don’t?”
“If we don’t what?” Paige asked. “Accept each for who and what we are? Don’t break down hundreds of years of distrust and mystery?”
Tony stared painfully up at the ceiling. “Yeah?”
Reality was a bitch. “We have one dead shifter already. What happens when there are two? Or three? Or four? Or more? And what happens when we realize we could have done more? We could have worked together? We could have used our powers as a team?”
Dexx scratched his head.
Tony rubbed his face.
Jack nodded his way back to the papasan chair.
“The time for secrets is at an end, guys. It has to be. If we can’t get past this?” Paige leaned back, the hand not holding her wine on her head. “We might as well just give up now.”
Tony pulled on his ear. “Okay. Well, get ready for this. He wiggled his fingers.
A scene appeared in the middle of the room like a green hologram.
Chief Gormon sat behind his desk, working on his computer, the overhead light reflecting in his bald dome. He looked up at Tony.
Tony’s voice said, “Hey, Chief. You wanted to see me?”
Chief Gormon’s head nodded. “We’re getting a new detective. Came to us by way of a favor.”
“Oh?”
“She’ll be your new partner.”
The scene blinked out for a moment. “Great, Chief. Thanks.”
“She’s a real loose-end. Solves a lot of cases mysteriously. There’s a lot of weird stuff around her.”
“Oh?” Interest replaced the boredom in Tony’s voice. “Really?”
“Yeah. Weird stuff like you used to have.”
“Oh.”
“So, here’s what I’m going to tell you.” Chief Gormon rose from his leather chair and leaned on his spread fingers. “I don’t want that weird shit in my precinct. You understand?”
“Loud and clear, Chief.”
Chief Gormon speared Tony with his pale gaze for a long moment, then nodded and retook his seat. “Good.”
“Who is it? What’s her name? Her experience? Tell me she’s not a pup.”
“Detective Paige Whiskey. She ain’t no pup, that’s for sure. Just…strange shit I wish I didn’t know about. I could kick Henry’s ass for telling me.”
“About what?”
Shaking himself, Chief Gormon shooed Tony out of the room. “That’ll be all. Just be ready for her. She’s your responsibility.”
Paige blinked in hazy surprise as the image disappeared. “Whoa. That’s cool.”
Tony smirked and shrugged.
The reality of what she’d just seen registered in her wine-slogged mind. Her old boss, Chief Henry Pendergast, had known about her cases? Enough to warn Chief Gormon, her current boss. How much had Chief Pendergast known? And how? “Anymore tricks in that bag of yours?”
“A few. Yours?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Most definitely.” Though, it was hard to top hologrammed memories.
Dexx turned to Jack. “What about you, Special Agent I-See-Dead-People?”
“I see people die.” He raised his hands to either side of him. “There isn’t a whole lot there.”
Paige jutted her chin forward. “Have you tried to control it?”
“How?” Jack’s voice rose with frustration. “I’m new to all this. I don’t even know where to start.”
Tony smiled at Paige. “A pup. How cute.”
A yawn ripped through Paige, forcing her into a full-body stretch. Half a bottle of wine on top of a hard day followed by a wreck of a week was taking its toll.
Tony gave her a thumbs up of approval.
She thanked him with a smile. “Okay, Jack. I’m assuming you’re scared of your gift.”
He released a high-pitched chuckle. He cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well, you need to get over it.”
“That easy.”
“Like learning to not wet the bed.”
He quirked his lips.
She pulled a face at him. “This is a part of you now.”
He rubbed his head, staring at the floor. “I guess.”
“There’s no guessing. This is you, dude.”
“But seeing people die? Why would I want that?”
“Why would I want to summon demons?”
He tossed his head back and forth, his expression saying, “Yeah, I guess.”
She needed to listen to her own advice. Again. “Lose your fear of all of this. Witches. Vampires. Demons. Shifters. This is your world. You don’t belong in the world of the muggles.”
“Muggles!” Dexx slapped his hand to his forehead. “That’s the word I was looking for the other day. I totally lost it.”
“This isn’t Harry Potter,” Jack said.
No. It wasn’t. Paige gestured to the floor at her feet. “Come on. Sit. You need to find your gift and figure out how to use it.”
He stared at her as if looking for a rope.
She understood where he was coming from. She’d been there once, but everyone had been too scared of her to help. “Hey. You think you’re the first one to go through this? You’re not. Do you have any idea what it was like to grow up in a family of witches and be the demon summoner?”
“Um, no.”
“It was hard.” Oh, man. To tell her story without whining. Or to get those looks that asked her what kind of a horrible person she was. “I lost my daughter because of my gift.”
Tony opened his mouth, glancing at Dexx.
Dexx held up his hand as if to say, “Just listen.”
She really didn’t want to share, but what they were trying to do here was real. They had to know what she was willing to put out there for this. Fuck. “Yeah. Well, kind of. No one wanted to understand my gift. They were too scared of it. My great grandmother had this gift and it broke her. She killed herself.”
“Oh,” Jack said softly.
“Yeah. Well, and then, my m
other came, took Leah from me because of it.”
“But she can’t do that.” Jack shook his head. “That’s unheard of.”
“Not really. No. It happens a lot more than you’d think.” She’d researched it. Grandparent rights. Grandparents who thought they were saving their grandchildren.
From parents on drugs? Sure.
From parents who refused to get jobs? Yeah. Okay.
But from parents like her?
There had to be more.
Or not. Who knew? No one talked about it. There weren’t support forums or groups for parents who “just weren’t good enough” to keep their kids.
“Rachel is an angel whisperer. We think that’s how she did it. She had angels helping her.”
“What’s an angel whisperer?” Jack asked.
“What do you think?”
He frowned and clamped his lips shut.
“What I mean to say is, you see people die. Great. Learn to use it. Learn to help. It’s not the worst gift out there.”
With a deep sigh, he sat, crossing his legs at her feet. He set his beer mug on the beige-in-spots carpet beside him. “Now what?”
She’d never taught anyone before. Her grandmother had taught her earth magick. She really had no idea what she was doing. “Relax.”
“Right.” He chuckled dryly. “Because that’s going to happen.”
She switched to witch vision. Instead of seeing his face, she saw what some people called the aura. She didn’t call it that. She called it the soul. His shifted constantly from green to maroon to blue to yellow, shooting off sparks of light like beacons.
Something dark resided at his core.
Interesting. Others might say that darkness was something evil, but she knew better. As a demon summoner, she’d been made to question things like that. She’d seen people who were beautiful and good in public, and absolutely evil behind closed doors. She knew black could be white, and white could be black. Nothing was so cut and dry.
She stared into his flaring soul eyes with her witch vision. “Relax.”
A wispy tendril of deep red fled from her soul to his, offering her experience along with the soft command. How to relax when everything inside is saying to remain on edge? Dark shadow coiled the red as her demon gift offered support of its own.
The jittering swirls of wild color slowed in his soul, the sparks shooting off less and less.
Those beacons of light hit her wards, flaring like fireworks along her ceiling before flowing toward her broom. Her broom glowed orange.
She really should clean it. Again. But orange was good. Still in good charge and good health.
Good.
Time for a little instruction. “Reach inside.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care.”
His soul flared again, red and gold exploding across her ceiling close to the plant that had just overtaken the window. “It scares me.”
His soul sent a tendril toward hers, information infused with it. He was scared of himself. “You’re not a monster, Jack.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “I am.”
She understood why he felt that. When she’d first discovered she was a demons summoner, she’d felt something was wrong with her. Especially, after Alma’s reaction. But she wasn’t and he wasn’t, either. “You’re not.”
“I am.”
She recalled those short years she’d raised Leah. Her daughter had been strong-willed, which was no surprise. She came from a long line of strong-willed women, but most times instead of being shown, she’d needed the tools to figure it out for herself. “Are you scared of your hand?”
“No.” His tone filled with indignation.
“Well, you should be. It pulls the trigger of your gun and has the ability to kill people. Your gun doesn’t kill people. Your hand does. Do you fear it now?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I control my hand.”
“Hmm.” She let him make the connections he needed to on his own.
He was quiet for a long moment. “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” he said again, his tone low.
Something changed in his soul. The colors became deeper, richer. The fireworks display along her ceiling ceased. A fog of shadows rolled around him. He took in a deep breath.
His soul eyes shot open, nearly blinding her with the purest light she’d ever seen. Except this wasn’t a real light hitting her retinae. It pierced her soul.
And spoke to the door residing within her.
He stood, turning around in a slow spin. “Your neighbor four buildings down with the yappy dog is going to have a heart attack in three weeks.”
“Impressive,” Tony said.
Jack stopped, turning his head to the window. “That man is going to shoot an eight-year-old boy while robbing the Seven Eleven.”
“Is he going to die?”
“Not then, no.”
“Then, why do you see him?”
“The boy he kills.” Leaning forward, Jack craned his head.
Switching to normal vision, Paige watched a big blue truck rocket down the street.
“Can you get his name?” What could someone do with that ability? Save people? It was an eight-year-old boy. “We could run him.”
Jack shook his head and held out his hand, palm up. A boiling black cloud filled it. “We could, but then his big sister wouldn’t go to law school and put away the biggest serial killer our world will see since Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Tony’s eyes widened, his mouth went slack.
Jack blinked rapidly and the smoke dispersed, trailing toward Paige’s broom. “That was…I could see so many things.” He stared at her, his eyes narrowed, his mouth gaping.
“What did you see about me?” In Louisiana, he’d only seen death if it surrounded Paige.
He didn’t move for a long time, then jerked his head. “A lot. Just—” He shook his head again. “A lot.”
She wanted to push, but he’d made some pretty impressive progress. She would press. Later.
“Well,” Dexx said, propping his ankle on his knee. “As far as party tricks go, that one’s pretty cool. Do we know if any of what you said will come to pass? Nope. But it looked crazy cool.”
“Thank you.” Jack frowned, grabbed his drink and sat down in the papasan chair in front of the TV. “What gifts do you have?”
“You mean, besides my rapier wit?”
Paige snorted. “Rapier wit?”
Dexx blinked coquettishly at her as he stood. “Guns. My gift is guns.”
Tony chuckled.
“No, seriously. Don’t do anything while I’m gone.” He disappeared into the spare room.
Jack pushed himself into his chair. The force he used to relax into a smile was almost painful to watch. “At least he’s excited about it.”
“You have no idea,” Paige said. “You get him talking about cars and guns, you might as well put it up for the night because it’s game over for conversation.”
Reentering the room, Dexx laid his duffle bag on the floor and knelt. “I may not be able to make plants grow, or R2-D2 a message, or tell the future around death, but I do know how to operate a wide variety of…” He wiggled his eyebrows with a smile and brought out a Ruger Mark III. “…guns and knives and anything else you could think of.”
The boys fell on the bag like little girls with a bag of dolls, exclaiming over a few pieces.
“Isn’t this one illegal?” Tony asked, holding up the sawed-off.
Dexx shrugged. “Yes. Yes, it is. However, when you have a poltergeist after you, you’re going to want that. It holds salt shells and isn’t nearly as cumbersome as a full shotgun.”
Jack took it from Tony and picked up a red shell. “Salt? I thought that only worked on TV.”
“Nope. Real life. Something about the salt, man. I don’t know.”
“Purification,” Paige said, propping herself on the arm of the chair. “It’s w
hy we sometimes salt our thresholds.”
“Hmm.” Tony picked up a Sig, ejected the mag and cleared the chamber. “This is all pretty impressive.”
Paige bent over to retrieve the .22 pistol with the cherry wood handle. “Took this one into a warehouse filled with demons.”
Dexx smashed his lips together and pushed them out. “Yup. That’s also where I nearly died.”
“Yup.”
“You brought a gun to a demon fight?” Tony stared at her in disbelief.
“Well, and a few knives. My gift was out of commission.”
Dexx pulled out a knife with an antler handle. Wide, curved blade. Runes and symbols etched into the side. “This blade in particular can take out any demon. Doesn’t matter where you stick the host. They can survive. Barely. Mostly. Not really well, but they can survive if you stabbed them in the right place.”
Jack took it from him, running his fingertips over the symbols.
They flashed and sparked as if an electrical current were running along the surface.
Paige jumped. “You know what, Jack?”
“Hmm?” He glanced up at her, then back at the knife.
Another spark.
Dexx took the knife back, frowning at it and Jack at the same time.
“I think when I go back to see Sam, you’re coming with me.”
“Um. Okay?”
She nodded, her eyes wide. What a strange day. What a strange, strange day.
Some officers of the law might flout the drinking and driving thing, but the officers in Paige’s apartment weren’t them. Tony camped out on the floor and Jack took the loveseat. She really needed to invest in a couch, or a bed for the spare room.
Dexx stayed in her bed. With her.
Yeah. She really needed to do something about that. Finalize the deal? Make a real man out of him?
He was wearing off on her. Good grief.
The next morning, Jack hummed in the front bathroom, the water turning on in spurts.
The smell of bacon permeated the bedroom.
Paige frowned. This was an awful lot of noise for her normally silent apartment.
Dexx rolled out of her bed in his boxers and started up a conversation with Jack. In the hall bathroom. Like it was every day two guys got up in a woman’s apartment and shared the bathroom.
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