He was.
And he’d been sleeping outside the front door, leaning against the glass.
He must’ve heard me approaching, because he stood up in a hurry and waited for me to let him inside.
“I swear, you’re like a stray,” I said.
He rolled his neck and shoulders, which were probably stiff after he’d slept against the side of the building. Forbidden residents were already up and about, and they’d probably taken him for a homeless person. But it was the small wince he made as he stretched that thawed my cold heart of stone.
“You can’t stay out here anymore,” I said.
“No?”
“No. You’re probably scaring off customers. If you must remain in Forbidden and you refuse to get proper lodging, you can stay on the bench in here.”
He flicked a glance at the four-and-a-half-foot-long bench in question. “Looks cozy. Sort of like the pit of despair.”
“Shut up with your Princess Bride references. I don’t like that film anymore.”
“Oh, Kels,” he said. “I can tell when you’re lying, remember?”
It was one of the things I’d hated when we were together. I never felt I had any secrets. Every emotion, every feeling, every damned thing was open for his inspection and analysis.
“You’re frowning,” he said. “I pissed you off again, didn’t I?”
“Argh!” I threw up my hands and turned around, intending to go upstairs. But the path was blocked by bright, colorful flowers. The pile was over five feet tall, and wide enough to prevent anyone from passing. “What is this?”
Xavier held up his hands. “I had nothing to do with it.”
Marching to the stairs, I poked the pile with the toe of my shoe. It moved slightly, just as I’d expect a giant botanical obstacle to do.
“Peter!” I called past the abundance of blossoms. “Peter, what’s going on?”
“I had too many up here, so I put them in the hallway to share with you, sister dearest!” he responded.
“You have too many? This is too many! What are you doing?”
“I keep making them,” he said, his voice muffled. There was a spitting sound, like he was trying to keep blossoms out of his mouth. “I’m not sure how to stop.”
I turned around to look at Xavier. “What the hell is this?”
“No idea. Aren’t you glad I’ve stayed, though?”
“No.” Luckily, I had my phone tucked into my back pocket, so I pulled it out to dial Cordelia.
“It isn’t ready yet,” Cordelia said instead of the usual hello. “It takes time.”
“No, not that,” I said, eyeing Xavier, who was looking at me with curiosity. “I have a question about supernatural illnesses.”
“Oh, no,” Cordelia said.
“It’s not me, but a...vampire friend. Peter.”
“I am more than a friend, more than a trend! I am your brother from another mother!” Peter shouted through the flowery stairway.
Sighing, I continued, “Peter’s power is pestilence.”
“Poetry!” he argued. “My power is poetry!”
“And he’s kind of smelly.”
“I smell like flowers!” he shouted.
“But, as you can hear, everything is upside down with him.”
Cordelia made a thoughtful hmm sound on the other end of the line. “Everything is backwards with him?”
“Just about,” I said.
“I’d say demon possession, but Forbidden should be free of demons now. We closed up the portal a few months ago.”
“There was a demon portal here?” I asked, unable to keep the high pitch of panic from my voice.
Xavier gave a start and his eyes got big.
“Not anymore,” Cordelia said, her voice soothing. “It’s closed forever. So maybe he picked something up, somewhere else.”
“Can you check him out for me?” I asked.
“I could,” she said, “but that would slow me down on the other—”
I coughed loudly. “Okay, no worries. I think I know who to call.”
Cordelia and I hung up, and then I looked at the screen.
“Ghostbusters?” Xavier asked.
“No.” Did he ever stop making wisecracks? I closed my eyes and sent my thoughts to the phone number I heard screamed on the radio every night in Yelling Man’s abrasive voice.
With the number in mind, I typed the digits in and waited for the line to ring. I wasn’t sure anyone would answer, but someone did.
“Hello!?” he shouted.
I’d remembered the phone number correctly. “Yes, hi,” I said. “I’m calling about a supernatural problem.”
“Great! You’ve called the right place! I am an expert! It’s a demon, isn’t it?!”
Wincing, I held the phone a full foot from my ear. Even Xavier was making a pained expression, and he stood several feet away from me.
“I’m not certain if it’s a demon,” I said. “We were wondering if you could take a look—”
“Where are you?! I’ll be right there!”
I was already having doubts about this. After all, if Peter wasn’t covering me with chicken pox or herpes, why should I be trying to change him back? To Yelling Man, I said, “You know, I’m sure it’s probably fine.”
“Nonsense! Give me your location and I will bring my exorcism materials!”
I looked uncertainly at Xavier.
“I gotta meet this guy,” Xavier said, looking eager.
I had no idea why I was entertaining his curiosity, but I recited the tattoo parlor’s address to Yelling Man, who confirmed he would be here within the hour.
I’d just barely turned to Xavier to tell him to brace himself for quite a lot of yelling when the front door swung open.
“I’m here,” said a gnarled old man in a quiet voice.
I wasn’t tall, and he was even shorter than me. He had a scraggly white beard, skin like shoe leather, and a confident stance that was punctuated by the way he puffed out his chest in his pirate-style ruffle shirt. His sharp eyes shot quickly between Xavier and me, and he squeezed the strap of some kind of bag that was slung over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry—you are?”
“Ben Griff, of course,” he whispered. “You just asked for me to come. I’ve brought all of my supplies.”
It was hard to believe this was the same man who burst eardrums on the reg through his radio program. But his whispered voice did share the unique hoarse quality I had heard night after night on his program.
“Supplies?” I asked.
He gestured toward his bag, which appeared to be of the golfing variety, and I felt my eyebrows go up. Sure enough, there were no golf clubs sticking over the edge of the bag. He pointed at me. “Vampire.” Then he pointed at Xavier. “Shifter.”
Xavier and I shared a look. How could this human know the truth about either of us?
“I’m Kelly Flowers,” I said, holding out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Griff.”
“Call me Ben,” he said with a smile that revealed a set of surprisingly white, surprisingly straight teeth.
He might have pegged our supernatural natures, but he also didn’t seem put off by them.
“What do you have in there?” Xavier asked, sauntering over and touching the top of the bag.
Yelling Man—I mean, Ben Griff—slapped his hand away. Xavier’s mouth fell open in surprise. I bet he hadn’t had his hand smacked by anyone since he was a kid.
Ben Griff was officially my hero.
“Is this the guy with the demon?” Ben pointed at Xavier.
“No,” I started to say, but Ben had already whipped out an aerosol can and was spraying it at Xavier. Purple clouds of tiny droplets filled the room.
“Hey! I’m not possessed!” Xavier said, backing up and coughing.
“Take that, demonic creature!” Ben whisper-yelled. “Go back to the rock you crawled out from!”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “He came from a rock. And I bet
that rock was shaped like a dick.”
“Kelly, help me!” Xavier choked out.
“If you’re not a demon, it won’t harm you.” Ben stopped his spraying and peered through the cloud of purple fumes to examine Xavier, who was bent over at the waist and coughing. “Hmm, I see no ill effects.”
“Other than suffocation,” Xavier growled between coughing fits.
“The guy I want you to look at is holed up in an apartment upstairs,” I said. I was starting to feel a little bad for Xavier, but there was no denying his discomfort amused me on one level.
“Right,” Ben said, sending another distrustful glance toward Xavier. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Peter’s usually gross,” I said. “Smelly, for the most part. But now he’s spouting poetry and creating flowers.”
“This is bad,” Ben whispered.
“It’s very odd,” I said, “but why is it bad?”
“Trust me,” he said. “You don’t want to let this demon stay here, not if it’s what I think it is. Show me to the host.”
Xavier recovered enough to help shove the mountain of flowers down the stairs while Ben looked on calmly. I sneaked peeks at Xavier’s muscles moving beneath the snug t-shirt he wore.
His Lordship King Snugglebumpkins wandered over with a mrrwor, then hissed at Xavier and ran up the steps ahead of us.
“He has good taste,” I said.
Xavier just snorted, and the three of us marched up the stairs to Marla’s apartment.
I knocked on the door. “Hullo, Peter, we need to chat with you.”
“I’m not coming out!”
“I could break the door,” Xavier said.
“No, I’d rather not wreck Marla’s door,” I said. “Peter, someone here needs to take a look at you and make sure you’re okay.”
There was no response. Sighing, I said, “You know that tasty treat I gave you the other day? The red stuff in the bag? There’s more of that for you later today if you’ll just talk to this nice doctor.”
Peter said, “There once was a doc from Kentucky, whose remedies made one quite plucky—”
“Shut up, Peter, and open the door,” Xavier said.
And to my amazement, Peter did.
A barricade of furniture blocked the door from opening all the way, and Peter stared at us from over the top of a dresser.
Ben gave Peter one glance and pulled his spray can out of the golf bag.
“Demon!” he whisper-shouted. “Demon, I command you to leave that vampire at once!”
Laughing, Peter looked behind him. “What are you saying?”
Ben pressed down the button on the bottle and the purple aerosol spray came bursting out.
“What are you saying?” Peter asked again. “And what are you spraying?”
Peter’s words ended in a scream and he clawed his face, tearing at his own skin.
“I can’t watch,” I said, but I was transfixed.
Ben kept spraying him, while Xavier and I backed up. Xavier grabbed my hand and held it, and I didn’t mind.
Finally, the spray seemed to run out, and Ben chucked the empty bottle at Peter. It bounced off Peter’s head before falling to the ground.
“The Opposite Demon is gone,” Ben said.
Flowers appeared next to Peter, but they weren’t fresh blossoms anymore. Now they were dead and slimy, smelling of mold. He pointed at the pile and tried to make more, but nothing happened. He seemed delighted by this development, because he clapped his hands and looked up, grinning.
“Kelly,” Peter said, “I’m finally free!” He held up a finger and I groaned as an itchy rash appeared on the backs of my hands.
“Take that back, Peter,” I said. “I do not want a skin disease today, thank you very much.”
Peter’s lower lip pushed out in a pout, but he said, “Fine,” and the itchiness faded.
Brothers were the worst.
Ben turned around to face Xavier and me while I inspected my disappearing rash. “It appears my work here is done.”
“Thank you,” I said. “What do we owe you for your services?”
“Not a thing, not a thing,” he said, waving his hands in the air—whether to gesture that it wasn’t important, or to try to wave off more of the purple demon-banishing smoke, I couldn’t tell.
“Well, we really appreciate it,” I said. “I listen to your show almost every night, by the way.”
“Do you, now?” he said.
“I do. It’s great listening.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ben said, hoisting his golf bag higher on his shoulder. “Well, there’s more work to be done. I have a conference to prep for. I can see myself out.”
Peter slammed Marla’s door closed, so apparently the demon exorcism didn’t clear him of his resolution to squat in Marla and Grayson’s place. Xavier and I followed Ben out, His Lordship King Snugglebumpkins at our heels, meowing loudly. I picked up the cat, surprised when he didn’t try to bite off my fingers, and watched Ben leave.
“Well, that was good, right?” I said to Xavier.
He shrugged. “One issue solved, true. Do you want me to get rid of the flowers?”
I stared at the giant mountain of blossoms and sighed. “Yes. I’ll help. We can put them in the dumpster.”
A part of me was disappointed that Peter’s issue was mostly resolved, because the whole possession issue had been a good distraction from the very real problem of my ex-boyfriend lurking around. Worse still, I didn’t mind as much as I had the day before. He was wearing me down.
7
XAVIER
While Kelly slept, I worked. I sent a quick text to Clyde like I did every night, telling him I was still looking into the situation in Forbidden. Every day that passed and I hung around town without furthering my investigation felt like deception. And I hated lies, even if they were only to myself.
The dump site of the corpse wasn’t easy to find. I’d asked Kelly for the location, which she refused to provide. She’d told me to buzz off, which suited me fine. I liked a challenge. All I’d gotten from Clyde was a general location—the forest northwest of town, a few miles out. There was a lot of forest to cover.
I made quicker work of the hunt by shifting into wolf form. Still, the terrain was wet with old leaves, and covered in a layer of frost. It was surprising to me that anyone had found a body out here at all. Whoever had hidden it had done a decent job of it. It couldn’t have been easy, either, to travel this far carrying a body without leaving tracks.
There was still an hour or two of dark left, but it felt like morning. Steam billowed up from my snout, and snow on pine branches brushed against my fur as I made my way over a rocky hill.
Down below, I spotted a very phallic set of rocks, and it hit me. Kelly hid this corpse, and she hid it there.
As I jogged down the slope, my paws slid on wet rock. I kept my footing and hurried to see if I was right.
On further inspection, the shaft of the rock had a curve to it, and a vein of a silver mineral running up it. It was too good not to be true. I circled around the unmatching balls, one much larger than the other, and poked at the snow with my nose.
The scent of decay was undeniable.
I clawed at the dirt, and the scent grew stronger. I dug deeper. It took a few feet of vertical digging before I found anything. And then I did. The body’s pale arms were crossed over a half-crushed torso. His fingers were formed into peace symbols, or as I’d learned in my two years with Kelly, the gesture meant fuck off in Kellyish.
After a few more detail checks of the body, I reburied the corpse. I shouldn’t have felt as satisfied as I did. A man was dead. But a smile pulled at my wolf face at finding something so very Kelly.
After a brisk jog back the way I came, I redressed and headed to the tattoo parlor. When I reached the sidewalk out front, the back of my neck pricked with the scent of shifter in the air. Alpha wolf. Not the tattoo client from before. How many shifters hung around this place?
&nbs
p; I thrust the door open and found a big guy standing across the room with his arms crossed. His hair was dark, his jaw set. “You’re the wolf intruding on my territory.”
I could say the same about him. And while I was at it, where was Kelly?
“You’re the alpha of Forbidden?” I asked, keeping my tone even and trying not to let my anger flare.
“Declan O’Malley,” he said with a nod. “Who are you, and why are you here?”
“Xavier Breene,” I told him. “I’m with The Stakehouse, Chattanooga.”
Recognition flashed in his eyes, as I’d hoped it would. But instead of apologizing for the cold reception and welcoming me to his town, his neck tensed and the scent of hostility washed over him.
Well, that was unexpected.
“Marla is pack,” he growled.
“I haven’t met Marla,” I told him. If I’d said I didn’t have any interest in killing Marla, it might have put him at ease, but seeing him hanging around here sparked my protective shifter instincts. Part of me wanted a fight.
“No pissing contests allowed in this establishment,” Kelly said, appearing from the stairwell. “I swear men are all such babies. I have one upstairs crying about his flowers wilting, and then there’s you two. Do I see hair sticking up on the back of your necks? And by the way, Declan, thanks for defending Marla but not me.”
“If you’re staying, you’re pack, too,” he said to her, but kept his gaze on me. “This is him. The shifter Joe told me about.”
Of course Joe would’ve told him about me. Declan was his pack alpha, and I was in their town without announcing myself. Usually I wouldn’t do that. First stop would be the alpha, if there was one, to explain why I was there. Often they’d have valuable insight to help me on my mission. But this time, I’d broken with tradition, and I was glad I had, because Kelly was involved.
“Xavier’s...fine,” Kelly told him.
A glowing compliment.
“Really,” she said. “You don’t have to kick his ass. I can do that myself.”
“Thanks,” I said, then turned to Declan. “I’m here to investigate the death of a human. A shifter from your pack, Eric Leffiths, contacted The Stakehouse.”
Exes and Exorcisms Page 4
