Bury Their Bones (Wicked Fortunes Book 2)

by AJ Merlin

  He’d remembered wrong.

  The Mother’s pet saints. Not The mother saint.

  It made a difference. It had to make a difference. Unfortunately, it didn’t put me any closer to understanding what his riddle meant.

  And if I didn’t figure it out soon, someone else was going to die.

  Chapter 27

  It was a pity that Merric wasn’t secretly here. Perhaps we could’ve puzzled the reading out together. Or at least been confused together.

  Then again, he probably wouldn’t have taken being wrong very well. I wouldn’t rub it in his arrogant face or anything. But maybe he’d have some idea what the necromancer had meant if he knew what was really said.

  Out of all of my lovers-if he could be categorized as such-he was the best at riddles and questions and the little details that hid in the shadows.

  “Okay, George,” I murmured, getting to my feet. I checked my watch, shocked to see that it was nearing six am. Had I really been at this for so long?

  It hadn’t felt like it.

  I’d heard from everyone that today was not going to be a ‘hunting through the streets’ day, as Cian had urgent vampire king business, and even Yuna had something that couldn’t be put off.

  Of course, I hadn’t heard a damn thing from the nogitsune himself.

  Before I did anything, though, sleep was a necessity. I was exhausted, and staying awake until dawn wasn’t going to make things any better.

  The necromancer had never killed during the day, I reflected, crawling over to my bed without a frame–that my mother so often complained of me having–and draping myself across it with a sigh.

  This was so complicated. Everything was complicated right now, and the reading that I’d hoped would illuminate me to what was going on, had not. Or at the very least, it hadn’t slapped me in the face with any answers.

  My eyes dragged closed. I was so tired. Even with the myriad of problems spinning around in my head, I couldn’t fight how much my body begged for sleep.

  Surely it would be okay for me to just get a little rest.

  The unforgiving music of my ringtone pulled me from one of the best sleeps I’d had in a very long time, dragging me up from the comfortable embrace of darkness and into a room that was…

  Not as bright as I’d expected.

  Had the sun still not quite risen? Had I just barely managed to fall into a deep sleep, only to be interrupted?

  My phone rang again, the not-so-dulcet tones causing me to reach out and grab it, as if muffling the noise with my palm would do anything to help me go back to sleep.

  “Hello?” I mumbled, not bothering to check the clock. I didn’t need another reason to be angry at being called before the sun was even up.

  “Where are you?” Yuna’s voice was sharp.

  “I’m in bed,” I informed her. “Where are you?”

  “You’re in bed? Still?” I didn’t understand the incredulous tone of her words, and sighed.

  “Yes, Yuna. I intend to be here until at least noon.”

  I felt myself dozing off again when she didn’t answer immediately and was shocked back into partial wakefulness when she did speak.

  “George, It’s seven pm. Unless you just went to bed, you passed noon quite awhile ago.”

  My eyes snapped open, and I sat up, the blankets falling off of me. The crystal on my floor still glowed with dim light, and my room was silent.

  “Seven at night?” I nearly screeched, getting to my feet hurriedly. “Holy shit. How in the world did I sleep so long?”

  “You were tired, I should think,” she replied, her voice brittle. “And why is it such a big deal? You aren’t going looking for him tonight anyway. Right?”

  My movements slowed. I looked down at the black skinny jeans in my hand.

  “Right,” I agreed offhandedly. “Yeah, I was just surprised. I don’t sleep this long.”

  “Why don’t you come over?” The cecaelia invited, not sounding as welcoming as her words.

  “I didn’t realize you were free.” I slid off my running shorts and replaced them with the jeans, trying to cradle the phone against my shoulder without much success.

  “I’m not. You can wait at my house and order food. We can text until I get home. I won our bet, you know.” Her voice turned husky.

  It did terribly unfair things to my body when she sounded like that.

  “Why don’t you come over so I can collect my winnings?”

  “That sounds hot,” I replied, putting her on speaker so I could strip out of my shirt. The shirt I’d laid out yesterday was black and made of a faux-leather type material that was shiny and slid against my skin. It was sleeveless, with a high neck that looked a bit like a scrunched scarf and pockets with zippers on each side.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “No,” I said with a very profound sigh. “But only because I’d prefer to come over when you aren’t just inviting me because you don’t trust me.”

  Yuna was silent while I finished getting dressed. As I was pulling on my second knee-high boot, she said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

  “You think that if I’m not with you, that I’ll go do something stupid,” I accused, as if I wasn’t here, about to do something that probably fell on the stupid scale.

  “I worry for you,” she amended with a heavy exhale of her own. “I’ve discovered that you’re a bit like a dog with a bone when you get an idea or think you have a lead.”

  “That’s rude.” I grinned, as if she could see me, and went to the cabinet under my window with its tray of small bottles.

  This was a new addition to my room. While potions weren’t my greatest interest, I did dabble here and there. Lately, Aveline and I had been ‘dabbling’ quite a bit.

  I pulled four crystalline bottles from the tray, shoving them carefully into the pockets of my vest and zipping them in.

  The Ward I sometimes used for protection was here as well. I wore it less lately, as it had really taken a beating with the vampires in the bayou, and recharging it took a lot, but I put it in my pocket as well. Just in case.

  “Then tell me what you’re doing right now,” the cecaelia requested. “Tell me I’m worrying for nothing.”

  I picked up the phone and sat in front of my vanity, staring at myself in the rectangular mirror.

  I searched my room through the glass, the action more habit than anything, for any sign of Merric. When he didn’t appear, I bit my lip. I was actually disappointed that he wasn’t here. More than I thought I’d be.

  While I wouldn’t want to deal with him trying to stop me if he was here, I couldn’t help but want him to show up all the same.

  Get ahold of yourself, George, I chastised, leaning back in the chair. I didn’t have the time to be mooning over someone who was inscrutable at the best of times.

  “George?” Yuna prompted, worry tinging her voice.

  “I’m sitting in front of my mirror,” I said, pulling my still-platinum hair up into a messy bun to get it out of the way.

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting my hair up. I will now pick up the band and secure it to the dyed hair. My hand is around the base–“

  “Stop. I shouldn’t have been so general.” She said something very low that I could not hear, voice edged in humorless amusement.

  “What?” I asked, pausing to gaze at the phone.

  “If you are going to go out, at least take Merric,” she said, her voice nearly a growl.

  “Oh…” I dropped my hands. “Yuna, I haven’t talked to Merric since we were with the others. I don’t think we’re getting along right now.”

  “What?” She sounded puzzled. “Since when? That’s not the impression I was getting from him.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” I challenged.

  “He was just here with me.”

  The words stretched between us. I bit my lip. I wasn’t jealous. Not romantically, anyway. I knew that Yuna would cut him into pieces long
before she felt any stirring of romantic interest in him, for one. Something dark seemed to curl in my insides.

  But it reminded me uncomfortably of how I felt when I saw Indra and Akiva together, acting like the whole world didn’t exist.

  Cian, Indra, and Akiva all had each other.

  Yuna and Merric were getting along more and more, and had become tight friends while I watched.

  And yes. I liked them. I liked all of them.

  But while they were together in pairs or groups, I was here.

  Alone.

  I chased the thoughts-and the feelings-out of my brain with a scowl. I didn’t have time to be stuck on creating a popularity contest in my brain. I couldn’t help if they liked me as much as they did each other, and I certainly couldn’t spare the time to worry about it now.

  “I’m just going to visit someone,” I said finally, my voice low as something I didn’t care to identify churned in my stomach. “I’m not going hunting tonight.”

  “Visit someone who’s a friend? You promise me?”

  She sounded so much like Akiva that I nearly snorted.

  “I promise. I’m going to go see Nathanial, he owns a shop next to where I work, and I’m going to go home. That’s it. Now, can I leave, please?”

  Putting on eyeliner with a hand that wanted to tremble with nervous energy was difficult, but not impossible. I managed, giving myself something resembling a cat-eye.

  I wouldn’t normally care to dress up to go see someone I wasn’t even remotely interested in, but this was different.

  The Voodoo community didn’t respect me. They didn’t even like me, but that wasn’t something I could change overnight. If I was going to go in there and expect them to help me with a riddle posed by a man killing fellow voodoo practitioners, I needed to look the part of someone who deserved their help. Not a witch out of her element who was barely sure of what she was doing.

  It’d look even better if I had two of the Wolves of the Moon at my sides, keeping pace with me with their inner, spectral glow .

  The jawbone at my throat warmed at the thought, and I sighed. It would be foolish of me to try it, since I’d most likely end up with the Form of the Moon out of control and the necklace snapping my powers off like a hard reset.

  “Text me when you’re done. Please?” Yuna asked.

  “Sure. I’ll talk to you later?”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later, George.”

  I tapped the button to end the call when she had finished speaking, staring at my reflection in the mirror. She was just worried about me. I knew that. They all seemed to worry, if I had a chance to do something on my own. Was I truly so uninspiring?

  My mouth twisted into a frown at the way my stomach jerked at that thought.

  But if they couldn’t help me with the answers I sought tonight, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.

  For now, I’d just have to take this one step at a time.

  My boots clicked on the pavement as I closed the distance between my car and Nathanial’s shop.

  To my surprise, the man was locking up, his keys jingling as he shoved one in the lock. It was way before midnight, and too soon for him to be closing.

  “Nathanial,” I called, glad I’d put on a thigh-length black coat with a broad hood to combat the chilliness of the night air. “Are you leaving?”

  The man turned to look me over, his brow raised as he appraised my outfit.

  “Are you going somewhere that requires a performance?” He asked in his accented purr. “The double-thigh holster is a nice touch.

  I glanced down at the newest addition to my wardrobe, running my fingers over the thick material. It was a lot like my usual bag, except doubled. Now I had a pouch on either thigh and straps around my thighs that reminded me of a gun holster.

  I felt a little self-conscious at how dramatic the piece was, but I was tired of cleaning blood out of my favorite purse. This one had promised to be liquid-resistant, and I was hoping it lived up to that claim.

  “I dress like this almost every day,” I promised. “Just not so…well.” It was a little more than my usual. Maybe Yuna’s fine taste was rubbing off on me.

  “What do you want?” He sounded curious, not unkind, but shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  I watched him with narrowed eyes, noting the way his eyes flicked from me to the door and how he couldn’t stand still. “Something happened,” I guessed, judging on his body language. “Something bad.”

  He looked down the street, craning his neck to make sure there was no one near us.

  A glance at my own workplace showed me that even Marin wasn’t around tonight. It made sense. She had somewhat sporadic hours due to her own secretive schedule.

  “Come on,” Nathanial ushered me towards him as we walked to a car parked along the empty street. “Something did happen,” he said when I fell into step with him beside the black, sleek vehicle. “But I don’t want to shout about it out in the open. I’m going to Johanna’s. You may come, if you wish, but…”

  He held my gaze while I walked to the other side of the car.

  “What?” I demanded, opening the door.

  “They didn’t like you last time,” Nathanial reminded me. “I doubt they’ll treat you any better now. Especially now that she knows who you are.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I don’t need them to treat me well.” Though it would’ve been nice, I thought, as I slid into the passenger seat beside him.

  Nathanial slammed the car into drive, barely glancing behind him as he peeled out onto the street. I clutched tightly to the seat belt, my knuckles white at the haste and sense of urgency that pervaded the car.

  Goddess, I hoped we wouldn’t get into an accident. That’d really be what I needed right now. Something else for my lovers to get worked up about. If I did have a car accident, would they become my personal chauffeurs?

  “Someone else is dead, aren’t they?" My heart pounded in my chest, as if beating in sympathetic panic to Nathanial’s.

  “Two more of my people are dead, as of an hour ago,” Nathanial said. “Just like the others.”

  “Is their magic gone?”

  This time he hesitated. “No.”

  Then it wasn't just like all the others. Not like the last woman, whose magic had been taken and then had drifted through the breeze for me to find.

  Why was she different than the others?

  “Who were they? Were they–“ I swallowed the word Bokor, “Like Yvenson?”

  His face was grim, and he shook his head.

  I waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, I sighed impatiently. “Nathanial, come on. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The two people dead weren’t like Yvenson,” Nathanial said, his face ashen. “They weren’t young, or naive, or so very close to becoming a Bokor.” He glanced at me, as if he’d known what I was going to call the young, dead man.

  “They were powerful. More powerful than you, or I, or many others here. It is suicide to try to hurt them, yet they’re the ones that are dead.” He hit the steering wheel, making me jump.

  “If this…creature can so easily kill Ambrose and Cecilia, what’s to stop him from killing all of us?” The shop owner demanded. “Is that his final goal? To kill all of our elders?” As his anger rose, his heavy creole accent thickened, making it harder to understand his words.

  Nathanial looked at me, his eyes off the road for longer than I thought wise. “Tell me, George. Where are the Loa now? Where are they, now that we need them to protect us?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t understand why they didn’t come to help their people, if they were so worried.

  Instead, they’d sent me.

  “They sent me,” I said, my tone brokering no room for disagreement. “For better or worse, they asked me to help you. And I will help you. We’re going to figure out what’s really going on here, Nathanial. And we’re going to stop them.”

  He laughed, his voice hoarse. “Empty
words, for someone who has no reason to care about us.”

  They were not empty words. Hadn’t I already tried to do so much for them? Hadn’t I almost died for them? I snarled, my fangs out and sharp. He glanced my way, sudden fear sparking in his dark eyes.

  “I promised you I would help,” I repeated. “Now, let me help.”

  Chapter 28

  When he came to a stop in front of Johanna’s house, I pulled my phone from my bag and stared at the screen.

  There were no messages from anyone.

  Because they were busy.

  Was it my curse to have no choice but to act alone? The one day I had something happen was the day my companions were all busy.

  Was I just that unlucky?

  Or…did it have nothing to do with luck at all?

  “George?” Nathanial touched my arm.

  “Just a second,” I said quietly, opening the messaging app and finding my chat with Merric.

  I’m at Johanna’s, and I could really use your help.

  I wondered if he’d even know who or where Johanna’s was. I hoped so. He seemed to know everything, and I didn’t want that to change now.

  I changed to my conversation with Yuna and hesitated.

  She was going to be angry with me, but there was nothing that could be done. I sent her a similar message and waited for the little icon that would show that she’d seen it and was replying back to me.

  It didn’t come.

  Last, I messaged my group chat with the troublesome trio.

  And I waited.

  My heart sank as none of them answered, though I had suspected that might be the case.

  But even Merric? What pressing activities did the kitsune have tonight that he couldn’t at least text me back?

  “I’m ready,” I announced, pushing my phone back into my bag. I couldn’t just sit around, hoping they’d come save my damsel-ass from whatever distress I was about to walk into. Again.

  Getting out of the car, I squared my shoulders and stared at the long sidewalk to Johanna’s house. The air was cold, and the street around us seemed eerily quiet. Barely any sound met my ears.