Page 60

CHAPTER 60

I was still trying to get my head wrapped around the turns my life had taken, which were very, very good and very, very bad.

Marley loved me and Serena Stafford was alive.

I felt strangely calm about that. Mom made me swear I wouldn’t leave Oddities until she came back this afternoon, and Marley said he wasn’t leaving me alone, so we’d spent the morning in the front room on the other side, arguing about the dragon he and Reggie were making because he thought it was too big for the space and I thought the bigger the better, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Serena still being alive. And worrying about whatever Mom and Max and the others were up to.

Then Marley went upstairs to get Maggs for our walk, figuring Mom would be back soon and give us the okay, and I went into the front room of the shop, full of my mother’s china rainbow and Ozzie’s ammo ashtrays and Marley’s automated teapot. And I thought, Maybe I knew Serena was alive all along . Maybe that was why I’d had the nightmares. Maybe there’d been some clue that she wasn’t dead, something so slight that I’d only noticed it subconsciously, and that’s why I had nightmares. My subconscious was trying to warn me that?—

The bells rang as the shop door opened and when I turned, I wasn’t that surprised to see Serena Stafford standing there, gun in hand, pointing it at me. She was dressed all in black, tall, pale skin, long black hair with a streak of gray.

If I hadn’t known she was alive already, I would have been screaming.

“Don’t scream,” she said.

“Wasn’t going to,” I said.

She looked surprised. “Good. I need information.”

“About who shot your son? Nope?—”

“My son,” she said, frowning. “He’s been shot?”

I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t playing me. “He tried to kill me. Somebody shot him to save me.” She looked confused, so I added, “He asked for it.”

“You mean he sent someone to kill you.” She shook her head. “But he wouldn’t have ordered that. That makes no sense.”

She really was confused, not faking it, I was pretty sure. “The theory is that he was looking for my mother and saw me from behind and thought I was her.”

“Stop lying,” Serena said. “Joseph is in France.”

I think I was more caught by the idea that Junior had an actual name than I was by the idea she thought he was in France. I mean, even she had called him Junior before.

Maybe it had been a code name. Maybe she’d given up on calling him that when she learned he wasn’t her son with Ozzie but rather with that despicable Norman. The big thing was, she didn’t know he was dead. And she hadn’t known he’d come here trying to kill people.

She was frowning now. “And you are much too calm. Are you on some drug?”

That was annoying. “No. This is what ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think’ looks like. What do you want from me this time?”

“The microfilm,” she said.

“We did that movie already.” I knew I should have been terrified, but I was just tired of all of this. Of people who thought guns solved problems. Idiots, all of them. “Herc has the microfilm.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Herc sent me here to get it.”

I shrugged. “He lies a lot. The Ferrells gave it to him.”

She blinked and I knew that hit home because it had the ring of truth since the Ferrells were rat-bastards. And it was the truth.

“Where’s your mother?” she demanded.

“Not here.” I wondered how much she didn’t know. “They’re safeguarding the treasure.”

“What treasure?”

Wow, she was really out of the loop. I shook my head. “You really shouldn’t trust Herc. Dmitri’s treasure.”

She blinked. “Alexei Dmitri?”

“He’s here.”

“What the fuck?” she said, more to herself than me. “He’s dead.”

“No. He’s alive. And here. Brought a llama.”

She gestured to the door with her gun. “You’re coming with me.”

“No.” I leaned back on the table behind me, too tired of this crap to be defiant standing up. “I’m not going with you. We did the hostage thing once before and it didn’t work. If you shoot me, you don’t have a hostage, you have a corpse. If you shoot me in the leg, you have a lame hostage who is going to be screaming at you. If?—”

“What the hell happened to you?” she said. “You weren’t like this?—”

“ You happened to me,” I said, and then the door to the shop opened and hit her in the back and Serena staggered for a second and then moved to the side, weapon still ready.

“Oops, sorry,” Hermione Witch said gaily. “I was just—oh, hey, hi! What’s your favorite Christmas—oh. You have a gun.” She looked from the gun in Serena’s hand to me. “Maybe I’ll just come back later.”

“Oh, no,” Serena said and turned to aim the gun at Hermione. “Get in here. Over by her.”

Hermione was shaking her head. “You know, really, I can just?—”

And that’s when Marley came down the stairs with Maggs on a leash, saying, “We’re ready to—” and she swung to put the gun on him and the dog. It was getting crowded and I could tell Serena was losing control.

I thought about diving for her knees and stomping her into the floor, but that would probably just get everybody shot, plus she was aiming at Maggs now, who was trying to leap for her throat and barely being held back by Marley, who also evidently did not want a gun aimed at them. So I said, “Stop that now. You need to know some things.” She looked at me, and I said, “Herc has the microfilm. Dottie gave it to him days ago. Junior is not in France, he’s dead. Somebody put three bullets in him when he shot at me. No, I will not tell you who shot him, but I can take you to his body. If you want. I wouldn’t recommend it, he took the bullets in the face, but I know how you people like proof of death.”

She had frozen on the word “dead.” “I don’t believe you,” she said, but she did. It was in her face.

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“I’ll just leave now,” Hermione said, and no one paid attention to her as she scuttled out the door.

“Who the hell is she?” Marley asked, still holding on to Maggs.

“Serena Stafford. Junior’s mother. The woman who kidnapped me.”

The way he looked at her then, I’d never seen him like that before. I was afraid he might let go of Maggs’ collar and go for her. He was looking at the woman who’d traumatized me, but I was looking at a mother who had just found out that her son was dead. I didn’t feel sorry for her, I still hated her, but she was a human being now, not an Evil Force Sent To Give Me Nightmares.

“Your son did a lot of damage here,” I said. “He sent someone from the Cauldron to kill Coral. Luckily, they failed. He put a snake in my mother’s oven. Stupid. He put a bomb in Pike’s truck; it didn’t go off. He put another in Lian’s office. That one went off.”

“A snake?” Serena said.

Compared to trying to kill Coral and a bomb on Pike’s truck, that was what she focused on?

“A rattlesnake,” I said. For the first time the gun wavered. “Did Joseph have something for snakes?”

She didn’t answer.

I was grateful when Marley spoke up. “I’ll take you to his body,” he said, his voice grim. “And then you will leave.”

“We’ll both take you,” I said.

The muzzle of the gun moved to Marley, back to me, back to Marley. That twitch quivered in Serena’s jawline. “A fucking snake,” she said. “Joseph loves snakes.”

Kindred spirits, I did not say.

“Loved,” Marley said. “He’s dead.”

Serena stared at him, lowered the gun, and then said, “Take me to him.”

This was the biggest anti-climax of my life, my worst nightmare and my dream date, all going to put this to rest once and for all.

Serena Stafford was back, and I didn’t care.