Page 17 of Midnight Auto Parts (The Body Shop #3)

F our hours almost to the minute, I woke from my nap to find Josie and Kierce preparing a late lunch in the kitchen. She was walking him through how to toast bread for BLTs made with garden-fresh veggies and her homemade sourdough. As I lay in bed, watching them through slitted eyes with a warm feeling in my chest, I tried picturing her beside Harrow with such ease and failed spectacularly.

A heartbeat, maybe two, and the image disintegrated beneath my doubt those two could be allowed in a kitchen together where knives were on clear display. As I looked within myself, searching for any signs I wished I was experiencing the fantasy instead of the reality, I found nothing left for Harrow but regret. Had he not come after Matty, we might have reconnected in a new way. As friends. But it wasn’t meant to be.

“Why are you asking me?” Josie crunched on a lettuce leaf. “I’ve never been in a serious relationship.”

“You’ve been in relationships,” Kierce countered, buttering more bread. “Why does it hurt?”

The wanting.

That was what he meant.

“You should ask Frankie.” She coughed into her fist. “Then again, no. Don’t do that. She’s only ever loved Harrow, and that’s like saying cheddar puffs are an actual cheese product. Which they are not . You don’t want those details. The Harrow ones, not the dietary ones. No good has ever come from hearing about your girl—or boy—friend’s ex. Or, since we’re on the topic, from reading the ingredient list on anything boxed or bagged.”

Kierce was quiet for a moment, focusing on his tasks, and then he sighed. “I considered killing him.”

“Please don’t count on me to be your conscience.” She groaned. “I would bring popcorn to the show.”

For a second, he appeared to contemplate if that was permission. “Have you always hated him?”

“No.” She set to work on three small salads. “I never liked him, but he earned my hate. He was isolated with his uncle, you know? He was brimming with magic and had no outlet for it. He was ashamed of it.” She shook up the dressing. “He saw Frankie practicing out in the open, and he was envious. Not that he knew that. For him, she was like a taste of the forbidden. A way for him to have it both ways. To experience magic without doing magic. As long as it was her fault for tempting him, he got to keep the moral high ground.”

The raw honesty in her words, so different from how seething they came out whenever she talked to me about Harrow, tightened the muscles in my stomach. I thought she hated him for breaking my heart. She had never specified, and I had never asked for clarification. She was so angry at him. All the time.

And now…hearing her unburden herself to someone else…I began to maybe understand why.

To hide my snooping, I faked a loud yawn and wobbled to my feet. “Hey, you two.”

“I knew I could count on the scent of bacon to wake you.” Josie grinned. “I told Kierce he should have put an extra crispy slice in your hand as an anchor. There’s no way you wouldn’t come back for it.”

Bacon was expensive. A luxury item. And, yeah, okay. I might have gone through a phase where I ate it by the pound for the simple reason I could afford it. It tasted better paid for with cash I had earned the right way.

Sadly, I had eaten so much of it that I went years unable to stomach the smell. Which explained why she always cooked it in her apartment and not mine. The scent lingered, and… Ugh. Just thinking about it made my stomach wobbly.

“I’m not a baconoholic.” The meal they had prepared together made my mouth water. “Ignore her.”

Josie bit into a carrot then jabbed Kierce with the tip. “Have you ever known me to lie?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

A low groan tore out of her, and she clucked her tongue. “We’ve got to work on that.”

“Josie says I’m a bad liar,” he informed me. “We’re going to work on it.”

“Kierce. No.” The groan tapered into more of a moan as she thumped her head on the counter. “We don’t tell those we’re plotting against that we’re plotting against them. It spoils the fun.”

“I appreciate the heads-up.” I joined them in the kitchen. “Kierce, I have intel but…”

“You’ve got time to eat.” Josie nodded to him, and they carried the food to my table. “Then I’ll leave and you two can get back to whatever has Carter’s tail in a twist.”

Josie and I ate BLTs with side salads while Kierce opened a plastic container filled with sushi that had come unrolled, likely from impact with the ground after Badb dropped them in a bag from overhead.

Since the crow herself was absent, which meant Josie had already known Kierce had his own meal ready to eat, I figured she had made the extra food for Pedro. She was sweet like that. Sometimes.

Topics of conversation included plants, music, and poison gardens. About what you would expect from a death god’s assistant and a dryad. The fact Josie acted and spoke like a grownup made it difficult for me to quit staring at her. Carter’s influence, if I had to guess, was to blame. Or maybe to thank. But it was weird. Very weird. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

The only thing missing from our impromptu lunch was Matty, but I would fill him in later.

“I’ll do the dishes.” I pushed back from the table. “It’s the least I can do to thank you guys.”

“I’m going to run a plate down to Pedro. I crossed an heirloom with a purple tomatillo. I’m going to ask his opinion since my sister didn’t notice she was scarfing down a Josie Talbot original.”

“I ate it too fast to notice.” I patted my belly. “That ought to tell you how much I enjoyed it.”

“We used to eat too fast to taste it too,” she told Kierce. “We had to, or we couldn’t swallow it.”

Done with his meal, he cleaned up his area. “Why not?”

“The taste. The texture. The smell.” She chuckled. “We ate anything we could fool ourselves into believing was edible.”

“Kierce doesn’t want to hear about our adventures in eating expired food.” I patted my stomach again. “Neither do I when I’m this full.” I slid my gaze to him. “We spent a lot of time in grocery store trash bins and sifting through fast food restaurant garbage.”

The former was more questionable than the latter. Expired dairy and meat left out in the sun had gotten us sick more than once. But it was a special kind of hunger that allowed you to convince yourself to put a half-eaten hamburger or chicken nugget in your mouth and pretend the preexisting bite marks were your own.

With a wiggle of her fingers, she made her exit. “See you love birds later.”

The bird jokes, I had come to accept, would be a part of my life as long as Kierce was.

As I set to work cleaning up after lunch, I updated him on Vi and my visit behind the ward.

No sooner had I wrapped up than my phone rang with a video call from Vi I answered on my TV.

“This is a fresh perspective.” She peered around inside the frame. “Where am I?”

“The new TV can receive phone calls.” I dried my hands and dragged Kierce to the couch with me. “Neat, huh? Now I’ll be able to see your beautiful face even better when we have our monthly chats.”

Too bad Matty hadn’t reminded me, or we could have tried it out sooner.

Life had been too crazy lately to recall small details like how to utilize my fancy new TV’s full potential.

“Well, ain’t you a mess getting a permanent?” Her chuckle was short-lived. “You told him what we saw?”

“I did.” I scrutinized her, since she couldn’t hide via video, but she looked good. Healthy. Like I hadn’t done her irreparable harm. Perky too. Like she hadn’t required four hours to recover. Though she had been zipping around without her body since before I was born and might not require any rest to recoup her energy. “The darkness is troubling.”

Head shaking, her earrings glinted sterling. “Whatever is hunting those women is a dark blight.”

“Not a dark blight.” Silver gleamed in Kierce’s eyes as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees with a predatory focus that lifted the hairs down my arms. “Anunit.” Badb glided to rest on his shoulder, her feathers puffed and her beady black gaze wide as she cawed and flapped her wings. “But how?”

“Anunit was a Mesopotamian goddess of war.” Death followed in the wake of all battle gods. That tie-in was the sole reason I knew the rather obscure goddess. “And the moon.”

“Myths are flawed things.” Kierce stroked Badb to calm her. “The original Anunit was Alcheyvāhā. It’s been said her ebony fur was spangled with white stars that glimmered in her coat. Her fangs were longer than a man’s arm. She devoured sunlight and dreams, and she was fiercely loyal to her mate. It’s said, after the gods killed him, they banded together to hunt her before she swallowed the moon and cast the Earth into endless darkness in her grief.”

The moon was alive and well in the sky, but the women had danced around their bonfire for light and warmth. Safety too. Most predators spooked at fire. Divine ones? Likely not.

“She sounds lovely.” I suppressed a chill. “You think she survived?”

“No.” Kierce sounded certain and then baffled by his surety. “None of them did.”

“Anyone with that much fury could manifest in the afterlife.” I chilled at the reminder of how close I had come to death at the clawed hands of a water spirit not so long ago. “Could she have become a guardian of the burial ground?”

Forehead gathering into a furrow, Kierce asked, “How could she have remained hidden for so long?”

Any creature her size, with her appetites, would have ignited a local legend about a beast in the woods that ate travelers who wandered off the road. Or had their cars plucked up like Hot Wheels and set down again in the forest. Whatever. Since no such lore existed, there must be a reason why she had been absent until now.

“The bones.” Vi worried her bangles on her wrist. “Either Anunit anchored her soul to them, or some of them are hers. Perhaps she woke when they were disturbed?”

Many ancient cultures had believed in sacrificing fierce warriors or ferocious beasts to protect their king, or queen, in the afterlife. Why should the Alcheyvāhā have been any different? Someone had to create the burial ground for them. They hadn’t just fallen over dead in convenient proximity to one another. Unless their murderers had been so frightened by them, they created the mass graves to keep an eye on them even in death.

Whatever her role, Anunit was making the women pay for the Morgans’ crimes in blood.

“What if it’s an initiation thing?” I toyed with the hem of my jeans. “Bring a bone to buy your way in?”

“Buy their way in…” Vi’s eyes flashed up to mine. “Your loaner said they couldn’t leave.”

“A bone was required for each woman to enter the ward.” Kierce kept flexing his hands. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” A glittering fissure threatened to crack open his facade to expose the divine visage beneath, and I didn’t flinch away from it. “We need to return the bones we took before Anunit turns her anger on us.”

Throat gone dry, I hadn’t considered he and I had been carrying homing beacons in our pockets.

Worse than drawing a dead god’s notice, I had brought mine home with me, making my siblings vulnerable.

“We have to go back.” I wiped a hand over my mouth. “We need to find Tameka and get answers.”

Keshawn was the one who had known where to take her mother to hide her. She could explain how word had spread about the commune. Tameka could act as our go-between and…

…the bottom fell out of my stomach.

The god bones. The Morgans had told others where to find them. The path they had paved with their good intentions might have just killed every single person within their ward.

Dis Pater had tasked Kierce with fixing this. Kierce couldn’t ignore his master. He had to act.

Already a dangerous energy vibrated around him, stemming from the Morgans’ abuse of a sacred place.

“Return the bones.” Vi made the sign of the cross. “Then gather fresh soil, and we’ll go again.”

Maybe it would turn out not making time to ward the burial ground had been a good thing if we had to keep zipping there and back again.

“Thank you.” I hated how my voice broke. “I’m sorry to drag you into this mess.”

“When I agreed to mentor you, I promised to share my knowledge and my aid so long as you never abused your powers. When you became my friend, I knew you would uphold your vows. Now you’re the next best thing to a daughter to me, and you’re out of your damn mind if you think I’ll let you face this alone.”

Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, but I glanced at the ceiling to keep them from falling.

“We should go.” Kierce stood and inclined his head toward Vi. “We’ll return soon.”

“See that you do.” Sudden fierceness turned her sharp. “Be careful out there.”

After ending the call, I braced to tell him my other news. “Ankou’s tree is inside the commune.”

The bits and pieces I had overheard made me more confident when I strung them together for him.

“That explains…a lot.” He shut his eyes. “Has anyone else eaten from it?”

“The Morgans won’t share, which makes me wonder if they’re addicted to whatever it’s doing to them.” I had to believe the fruit was to blame for their willingness to turn a blind eye to Anunit as she took out the women, one by one. “Could the Morgans have saved Anunit’s victims with the fruit?”

Pomegranate from the divine tree Kierce gifted me had saved Badb once from certain death.

“Divine fruit reflects the one who planted the tree, and their purpose in doing so.” He stared at me from under his lashes. “I doubt any fruit borne from Ankou’s seed would heal or help. It would be as mischievous as he, its purpose the same. A twisted solution to those who consumed it, one that consumed them as well.”

“Rosalie is pushing back, but Patty is a lost cause.” I decided that when I realized why Patty was urging apples on her sister. The fog was clearing from Rosalie’s mind, and Patty wanted to cloud her judgment again. “Why do we need more dirt?”

“The soil you used this morning is ash.” Kierce’s gaze touched on the trash can in the kitchen where he must have swept the remains. “It glowed hot, like coals, then glittered and charred like wood but didn’t burn where it touched us or the nightstand.”

“I forgot you sprinkled it over our hands.” I massaged my temples. “There’s a vagueness to my memories, like some of what I saw and heard is still slowly returning to me. It’s different from when Dis Pater summons you.”

“His power tugs me to him. I don’t expend any of my own. Perhaps the same is true for you.”

“But projecting myself inside the ward was all me, which left me physically and mentally tired?”

“Ask Vi. She knew to anticipate it, so she must experience it too.”

“I would love to hear I will outgrow the sluggishness, but there’s always a cost to performing magic.”

“Yes.” He carved a path toward the door. “Everything has a price.”

As the women in the commune were discovering, and we would too, if we didn’t make amends with Anunit.

Patrol cars speckled the perimeter of the ward where the road edged past it.

Though it was on the shoulder, clear of regular traffic, officers had set up roadblocks to protect anyone from driving into the equivalent of a brick wall.

From the number of uniforms milling around a tent set up near the tree line, more officers were using magical means to determine the exact shape and size of the affected area.

Kierce and I wore our lanyards and kept out of their way. No one stopped us as we collected plastic bags of fresh soil. Three of them. To cut down on the number of trips out here. Curious whether Carter was in this location or the previous, I dialed her number, but I got no response despite knowing she had replaced her phone.

“Do you think Anunit is denning at this location or merely hunting?” I put the question to Kierce after we were safe inside the wagon. “The bones are at the other site, but she can’t very well rain vengeance down on the thieves if they’re here and she’s there.”

I blinked, and Kierce was gone.

I blinked again, and Kierce was back.

Mashing my lips flat, I grumbled, “You made your point.”

A god, even a dead one, shouldn’t have a problem blipping between locations.

Anxious to be rid of the bones in my pocket, we returned to the abduction site. Though abduction might not be the right word. Voluntary abandonment site? Park and ride? I wasn’t sure anymore.

Halfway there, my phone rang, and I answered it on speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey back.” Carter’s voice came out faint with exhaustion. “What’s up?”

“Kierce and I just collected our dirt. I called to see if you were there, but we must have missed you.”

“Yeah.” Her breath rustled across the receiver. “We found another body.”

Regret that I hadn’t clued her in to what we had learned so far reared its ugly head. “Eaten?”

“Shot between the eyes.”

“What?” I felt my jaw go slack. “You’re sure the death is connected to the case?”

“The victim was Officer Tate’s husband. He was shot with her service weapon.”

“After her abduction?” Kierce tilted his head. “Did he help with the search efforts?”

“We called him,” she agreed. “He wanted to come out, and I wanted a look at him.”

I could have told her you couldn’t judge a monster by the face it wore, they hid too well in plain sight for that, but she would have learned that lesson before I was born. “Are you sure he left?”

“Volunteers were split into teams, and every team leader performed roll call before and after the search to ensure no one was left behind. He was accounted for. He left. Then, later, he came back. He parked a mile or so down a service road on the back end of the search area and walked in. He had camping gear in his truck and overnight supplies in a backpack he wore. We found his remains about half a mile from the second car, but there were no signs of predation.”

“His wife is still out there then.”

Had she struggled to collect her entrance fee? Or had she known he would come and waited for him? If she intended to vanish off the face of the Earth, behind an impenetrable wall, why not first guarantee her safety free of the consequences of her actions?

“We haven’t found any evidence to indicate either woman is in the area.”

For them to have disappeared together, I would have expected them to both end up behind the ward. Did that mean the second officer had gone ahead, unaware of what the other woman intended? There were no clear answers. Only yet another mystery requiring us to find one of them to ask.

“That reminds me.” I could have kicked myself for forgetting, even if I had plenty of excuses. “You mentioned wanting me to visit the morgue.”

“That was the plan.” Her laughter turned bitter. “The Hardeeville Police Department got ahold of the remains and won’t let us near them. The HPD doesn’t have a large enough paranormal presence to intercede in such cases. Yet another reason the chief is salivating to make a deal with them. To have more control over para cases outside our immediate jurisdiction. As it is, we’ll have to send someone to disappear the evidence.”

Better to lose the remains than allow even a glimmer of awareness among humans of what stalked the night beyond their driveways and streetlamps.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I might have a source that’s just as good.” I just had to find Tameka again. “I can get inside the wards. Part of me can anyway.” Eager to return, I filled her in quickly on everything we had learned so far. “I’ll update you when I know more.”

“You do that,” she said, hope a fragile thing.

Our conversation had spanned the tail end of the journey to the burial ground, which held fewer patrol cars than last time despite the recent murder. Movement through the trees proved there were plenty of officers here. They must have been receiving too many inquiries from the public about the heavy police presence and decided to downplay the situation. I couldn’t say I blamed them when the truth would do humans, and us, more harm than good.

The grim atmosphere engulfed us after Kierce and I exited the wagon, but there was no turning back now.