Decimus was a nerd’s nerd. White button down shirt with a pocket protector, thick glasses with wide black rims and hair glazed over to one side in a failed effort to tame a huge cow-lick. He talked with absolutely no inflection to his voice.
Whining wasn’t his thing, but he was definitely whining now.
“Geez, Deci, this doesn’t look like your normal stuff. Are you sure it’s the zombie dermatitis?”
His eyes widened, and he sniffed in disdain, “What else could it be?”
She poked at him, and I stood to peer over her shoulder at the bumps on his face. He had little flakes of what looked like dried skin all over his cheeks, except that this skin looked kind of blackish grey. He was dead after all. He reached up after she touched him and scratched, creating a bright purple mark.
“Weird,” I muttered. “What did you want to talk to me about anyway?”
He ignored my question. “Listen, I really don’t care what this is. You just have to get rid of it. I can’t look like this. They’re downsizing at the library. Illness will give them a perfect reason to cut my hours or let me go all together. I need to look normal!”
His tone had risen with each sentence until he was nearly screeching with emotion.
“This is stress,” Rhiannon nodded, taking a step back and stepping on one of my feet. I groaned and hobbled to a seat, hoping she hadn’t broken any bones in the process.
“I’ve got your normal stuff here, but why don’t you take some of this?” She handed him a small vial. “And this.” She added another. “And this. You’ve got a diffuser, right?”
“A what?” he asked, staring at the little bottles in confusion.
“My goodness, Deci. Don’t you ever get out? Here.” She handed him a few reeds and explained to him about diffusing essential oils. “And rub the lavender on your feet at night. You totally need to chill out, dude.”
My foot had stopped throbbing so I stood again and shook out my wand. With a wave and tap to his nose, the blotches on his skin immediately began to fade.
“You’ll need this.” I tossed him a potion I kept on hand for all of those clients who needed to hide their features. The spell I’d placed with my wand had an immediate effect, and the potion would sustain the affect.
Deci approached a mirror, inspecting himself closely. Finally, he took a deep breath and a hint of a smile crossed his face. “Thank you.”
I nodded, then crossed my hands over my chest. “Good, a happy client. Now care to share with the class?” There was a rap at his door, and I frowned when Decimus immediately made motion to answer it. I grabbed his arm to stop him. “You’re expecting company?”
“Friends of mine. They’ve got information for you.”
I was feeling very impatient about whatever game he was playing. Especially since I knew Deci didn’t play games. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t even know what the word meant unless he looked it up in one of his library dictionaries.
He opened the door, and a somewhat angry-looking troll entered the room along with a smiling centaur disguised as a human. The happy fellow immediately put out his hand to me. “You must be Lynlee Lincoln. I’m Hetcher Fauss and this is my friend, Thin Setzman.”
I inclined my head at Thin, but he only grunted. I sucked a breath in slowly, relieved not to find a foul odor hanging in the air. Trolls were notoriously nasty creatures, but apparently this one chose to take baths, at least occasionally.
“Yeah, good to meet you guys. Listen, we really need to get going, so is there something you want to talk to me about?”
“Well, Thin and I,” the centaur began, heading for Deci’s couch and sitting down. “We were at a restaurant a few weeks ago. So I’m an centaur and you know our hearing is even better than bats…”
That was true. His type of MAUC had super audio capabilities. It was a blessing and a curse sometimes. Being able to hear almost every single sound around you on a daily basis could be annoying and drive a person crazy.
“So I’m pretty good at blocking out the background noise. But then I heard your name, and it piqued my interest. It’s not a very common name, Lynlee isn’t. Deci has spoken highly of you many, many times, so I listened. And when the guy said he was planning to kill you, I thought you should know.”
“Me?” My lips drew into a tight line as my gaze flicked from the centaur to the troll and back again. “How do you know it was me they were talking about?”
“You’re the one who stopped the dark witch a few years ago. The one who was trying to steal the changeling. Every MAUC knows about it.”
Crap. That was me, all right.
“Young guy. Said he was warlock,” the troll broke in, his voice gravely.
I waited for him to elaborate, but I had the feeling that was all I was going to get from him so I looked back to Thin.
“Anything else?
“Revenge, Lynlee.” It was Decimus’ turn to speak. “The warlock’s name was Travis, and he said he was going to kill you for destroying his life.”
“Ah.” I frowned, finally understanding. I’d been a part of taking down the dark witch who had stolen Tig’s changeling a few years ago. A young warlock named Travis had been in cahoots with her. But it was my understanding that he wasn’t a warlock anymore. Before he was sentenced to three years in prison, he’d been stripped of his magic. Of course, three years should mean he was still in prison, but early release wasn’t unheard of in some circumstances.
“Dude,” Rhiannon gasped. “That’s the jerk who beat up Sandy!”
“Yep, that’s him. We’d better get back and contact Tig.”
“Thank you again,” Deci stopped us, rubbing his face with his hand as if nervous. “I’m just so worried about things at the library…”
We returned to Rhiannon’s house after we’d settled Decimus down and assured him that there would always be a job for those in his line of business. Okay, if I were honest, I would admit that Rhia did most of the assuring. I sat and replayed my dream over and over.
“Guess you’ve gotta head back to the family. Man, I’m starving. I’m going to …”
“Let’s go get a drink,” I blurted.
“What? Seriously? We haven’t gone out for a drink in like ages.”
“Let’s do it.”
She clapped her hands, excitement bubbling from every pore in her werevamp body. There was a bar that served chicken wings just a few blocks from Rhiannon’s house. My BFF ate there so often that they kept a table set aside just for her. They didn’t even bring us a menu, just dropped several plates of wings and assorted sauces onto the table and then asked me for my drink order.
“Bourbon.”
Rhiannon spit out her beer and grabbed my arm. “Holy crap. You haven’t had a bourbon since Prieto. Did he come back?”
I rolled my eyes and slouched down in my seat. “I haven’t seen him in months. He won’t come back.” We were referring to the fallen angel who had tried to recruit me to be an Enforcer the year before. The man was sexy as sin, which was ironic considering he’d been an angel. His powers had made it almost impossible for me to rein in my underlying desire for him. I was in a committed relationship with Beck, and so out of deference to us, he had promised not to come near me ever again. “And let’s just be clear about that. I was not drinking because of Prieto. I was drinking because I thought Beck was fooling around with Breena. Prieto just happened to come on the scene when my defenses were down.”
It was impossible to ignore the way Rhiannon’s eyes were boring into me. I took a wing and began nibbling on it while I waited for my drink.
“Fine, you’ll tell me eventually. And I know it must be some serious shit, or you wouldn’t be here with me.”
The waiter placed my glass beside me, and I took a long drink, sighing as I felt the warmth of it spread out from my belly to my limbs.
“Is it Travis? Probably Thin and Hetcher didn’t even know what they were talking about. Besides that, Tig will be able to figure it out.” She wa
s practically talking to herself but still looking at me as if I would jump in any minute. Slapping her hand on the table she leaned close. “Is it the curse? C’mon, just tell me.”
“The curse.” I drew both my legs up onto the booth seat and hugged them close to my body. “The curse is bigger than I thought. It’s attached itself to Beck, and we need to figure it out. And we don’t have much time.”
“Oh my God, is he sick? Why aren’t you with him?”
I shook my head and took another drink. “He’s not sick. It’s just affecting some of his … his behaviors. But I don’t have much time to figure it out.”
Her brows drew in close, and she dropped her chin into her hand. “Okay, we’ll figure it out. But why are we in a hurry?”
“For one, if curses aren’t broken quickly, they become permanently attached. If I don’t break the curse within a few weeks at the outside, it will have lasting effects on Beck.” I drained the rest of my glass in one long drink, then motioned the waiter for another. “Also … I had a dream last night.”
“Oh yeah? Freak you out or something?”
With a flick of my finger, I pushed the glass along the table until it hit the basket of wings. “It wasn’t just a dream. It was a vision,” I turned and locked eyes with her. “It was the vision.”
It took her a minute to digest that, then her eyes widened, and she shook her head so hard that her hair swung against her cheeks. “No, not that—” She gulped. “—vision.”
“Yep. Definitely that vision. I foresaw my death. The reaper’s coming for me.”
“… and he sailed into the air and came down sword first, and stabbed me right in my stomach,” As I downed my third drink, I wrapped an arm around my belly, recalling the feel of the blade cutting through my flesh.
“And that’s it? Then you died?”
For only the second time since I’d known her, Rhiannon was ignoring a perfectly good plate of food in front of her. Whereas I’d had about three wings, she hadn’t touched a single one. Both her arms were braced on the table, and her mouth was agape in horror.
“Well, not immediately.” I put my glass out and wiggled it to the waiter who was across the room.
“Oh God,” she moaned. “You writhed around a lot and suffered?”
I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to speak but my tongue was feeling kind of large and a tad uncooperative. “I don’t really want to think about the suffering part. I’m trying to block it out after that.”
“What did he look like? Could it have been Travis?”
I considered that a moment. I hadn’t been able to see the man’s face in the dream. The most I could say about him was that he was so thin as to be bony. That didn’t sound like Travis, but then I’d only met him that one time, and he could have dropped a ton on weight in prison. “I don’t know. Maybe. I couldn’t detect what kind of MAUC he was, and I didn’t get a good look at his face.”
“So how long do we have? A month? A few weeks?”
I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled to my calendar, then tapped the screen and held it out to her.
“Oh God,” she repeated in the same desperate tone she’d used just a moment ago. “That’s like a few days from now.”
“Yep.” I smiled when the waiter handed me another glass of bourbon.
“How do you know when? I mean, maybe you’re wrong about the date.”
I shook my head, tipping back my glass and then hissing through my teeth as the amber liquid seared its way down. “Nope, not wrong. Just before … you know.” I twirled my hand in circle. “Just before that I asked Rolayna what day it was. We have all of two days to figure this out.”
“Who the hell is this Rolayna chick anyway?”
I only lifted my shoulders and grabbed a wing as I raised my drink to my lips again.
Rhiannan put her hand on my arm. “Don’t you think you should slow down? I mean, we’ve gotta figure this thing out.”
“I’ve spent all day replaying that damned dream in order to figure this thing out. Now, I want to drink until I can’t think anymore.”
She drew back with a concerned frown on her face, which I was happy to ignore. Finally, she reached out for a wing and began tentatively munching on it. As for me, things were starting to get fuzzy, which meant the booze was definitely doing its job.
Rhia pointed her wing bone at me and opened her mouth. “I think we should ask …”
“I need to pee.”
I did urgently need to hit the bathroom, but more than that, I didn’t want to even think about the suggestion she was about to make. I most certainly wasn’t interested in talking to Granny about all of this yet.
It wasn’t easy, but I managed to make my way to and from the bathroom without falling on my ass. Even though I was having a hard time walking and an even harder time seeing, I didn’t hesitate to order another bourbon when I returned to the table. The waiter gave me a withering look, then glanced at my BFF.
“What?”
“No change,” she told the young man, handing him some cash.
“Hey,” I protested, snapping my fingers at him. Correction, I tried to snap, but the coordination between my thumb and fingers was almost non-existent. “I can pay for my own drinks, and I’m not finished yet.”
“It’s time for you to go home.”
Like an impudent child I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I don’t want to.”
As if on cue, my cell phone dinged. After some maneuvering, I got my weight off my right butt cheek and retrieved the phone from the back pocket of my jeans. Notification of a text message glared at me, and I frowned.
“You haven’t told Beck, have you?”
I dropped the phone onto the table.
She stood and grabbed my phone, then tapped out a response to Beck’s text. Handing me my phone, she waved her hand in an impatient way. “Let’s go.”
By some miracle, I managed to orb us back to the grotto. When I tripped coming out of the cave, Rhiannon slipped her arm around my waist to keep my face from making contact with the stone floor.
And that was when the giggling started. It was almost uncontrollable on my part and made it even harder for me to walk as she tried to guide me towards the house. We weaved to and fro in the dark. Thank goodness she had werewolf superpowers and could easily hold my weight, because I would have taken any normal gal down in a matter of seconds.
When we got to the front door, Rhiannon let go of me and pushed the button for the doorbell. I fell into guffaws, stumbling backwards into the porch column. “I live here, Rhia. We don’t have to ring the doorbell.”
“Well, I don’t live here.” She shot me an angry glare, and I laughed even harder. My BFF almost never got mad at me. This was an entirely new experience, and somehow I was enjoying it immensely. I reached out a hand and poked her in the backside, then winked when she growled at me.
Beck answered the door with a puzzled expression. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, sexy,” I slurred, then moved towards him, falling at him so that he had to hook his hands under my armpits to hold me up. My lips sought his, but my aim was off, and instead I caught him on the ear.
“Holy shit, are you drunk?”
“Can you get her inside, or do I need to carry her?” Rhia asked.
“I got her,” my lover said, and I stuck my tongue out at her in triumph, then giggled again.
Beck helped me to the couch and gently pushed me down to sit. Dropping my head back onto the cushions, I reached out to give his family jewels an affectionate caress. A look of abject dismay crossed his face as he moved out of my reach.
“Aw, c’mon, baby. Let’s show this curse a thing or two. I bet if I try really, really hard I could be naughty enough to make your bad boy rise up and play.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
With a disappointed pout, I pointed my thumb in Rhia’s direction. “She’s got something she wants to tell you.” I smiled and sat up. “But first, baby, I�
��d love some of that bourbon in the far right cabinet in the kitchen.”
“I think you’ve had enough.”
My brows pulled together as I stared at him. He had his hands on his hips, and he was glaring down at me the same way he did Justin or Jilly when they were in trouble. I didn’t like it one bit.
“Don’t look at me that way. I’m not your parent … er … I mean you’re not my kid … don’t treat me like a kid.” I stood and wagged my finger at him, the motion of which caused me to lose my balance. I tried to play it off by plopping back onto the sofa. I blinked my eyes when my vision started to blur. That didn’t help much.
Finally, I decided that was okay. I didn’t really want to see the look on Beck’s face at that moment anyway.
“Sit down, Beck.” I closed my eyes when I heard Rhia’s words. My hands started to turn clammy as my nerves began to outweigh the liquor. About that time, a cold, wet nose poked its way under my hand and I smiled as Patch snuggled into me. I nuzzled her, letting her affection soothe me a bit as I listened to my best friend and the love of my life talk about me.
“Okay, I’m sitting. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Well, you know about witches and how they get the vision? The premonition? Like Grammie Charley.”
“Yeah, I know. Charley had the vision about her heart attack, and she prepared her will and left everything for Lynlee to find. What does this have to do with her getting wasted?”
I could feel him pointing at me in accusation even though my eyes were still closed. I wanted to tell him where to go, but instead I ground my teeth together and waited.
“All witches get the vision, Beck. Lynlee’s came last night.”
There was a pause. I clenched my eyes closed and had the urge to cover my ears with my hands to block everything out. Patch wiggled, then leaned up to lick my cheek as if she sensed my distress.
“Oh, sweet Jesus. You can’t be serious.”
The absolute despair in his voice broke my heart. I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and bit hard, breath hissing in and out of my nose in quick bursts.
Reaping Trouble (The Lynlee Lincoln Series Book 4) Page 4
