Page 3

Chapter

Two

I da sat across from me at the mosaic-topped kitchen table in my mom’s cottage. We’d both needed another cup of coffee after leaving the mayor’s house. It was seven a.m. and we’d been up since sunrise.

The jade plant my mom had gifted me took center stage on the table. Cecil had planted it in a colorful Talavera pot after saving a cutting from my trailer fire. Beside it was the damaged jarrito mug Senora Cervantes had found in the ashes. I’d glued it together and filled it with sugar packets.

“So what happens if Mayor Rat spills her guts to someone?”

“The word liar appears in angry red letters on her face.”

“Does it stay forever?”

“Nah.” I shrugged. “Couple months or so. Maybe longer. Depends how guilty she feels about what she did. The spell doesn’t work that well on people with no guilt, but Felicia proved she possesses the emotion when she apologized to Carmen. It was genuine.”

“How do you know for sure? ”

I got up to top off my cup and Ida’s and plugged in one of Mom’s old, crackly transistor radios. I could replace it, but a new one wouldn’t have that same nostalgic magic.

Bill Withers’s “Lovely Day” accompanied my return to my seat. “I don’t. However, from what I know about the ex-mayor, she’s quick to anger and just as quick to regret. So it tracks.”

Ida harrumphed. “You didn’t vote for her.”

“Well, no. We’re at odds on most of the issues. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be sorry for acting like an ass.” I wrapped my hands around my new clay jarrito mug. I’d commissioned a local artisan to craft one identical to the one I’d lost.

“I still think it was pretty rich of her to call the wolf alpha Machiavellian and shameless.”

“She wasn’t wrong.” I brought my cup to my lips and closed my eyes as the coffee warmed me.

“Well, no. Alpha Pallás is as shady as a back porch in a thunderstorm. I’m saying Felicia Juarez isn’t exactly a paragon herself.”

“She was misled by the alpha.”

“You can’t be misled into doing something you weren’t already prepared to do.”

I set down my mug and picked up my cell phone to check my money app. Mayor Carmen had already paid in full. Nice. I’d be able to cover the annual insurance payment on the property.

My mom’s cottage—my current residence—sat smack in the center of the Siete Saguaros mobile home park. I’d ended up owning and running the place after Mom passed away three years ago, and it was a never-ending drain on my finances. The minuscule space rent didn’t scratch the surface of our expenses, and I only had five of the seven available spaces rented anyway.

So, I took the occasional side job, and that, along with a few other business opportunities I’d developed in town, covered the rest.

“You’re right, of course. I guess I feel a little sorry for the ex-mayor. She lost that election badly. It had to have been humiliating. ”

“She tried to sell out our little town to further her own corporate interests, Betty. She ain’t the good guy here.” Ida’s gaze settled on my phone. “You gave away some valuable leverage against Alpha Pallás.”

“Yep.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“To gain something more valuable—insight from someone who’s worked closely with Alpha Floyd and a possible ‘enemy of my enemy’ ally.”

Ida shook her head. “I hope your gamble pays off.”

“Me, too.”

She left then, and I turned up the radio and spent the next hour giving the house a quick clean to the sounds of the seventies.

In my Airstream, it would’ve taken about twenty minutes on a deep clean day. Mom’s house, though only 1300 square feet, took three times longer. Still, it was nice to have closet space again. The mosaic fireplace in the living room was cozy on cold desert nights. The kitchen was big enough for more than one person to comfortably move around in.

And if I saw the echoes of my mom’s dead body every time I looked at the door, well, maybe that was the price I was supposed to pay for being too late to save her.

My cell buzzed. Bertrand Sexton, the cemetery demon. It was his second today, tenth this week. I’d have to face him eventually.

I declined the call.

Finished with my housework, I switched off the radio and headed to the garden room with cat treats for Fennel and some fresh raspberries for Cecil. On the way over, I ran into Gladys Jimenéz. She was dressed in a cute black tennis dress and twirling a racket. She and Ida played tennis at the park a couple days a week.

“Betty, you still coming tonight?”

I avoided a patch of wildflowers that had recently begun growing around the stepping stones in front of Mom’s house. “Gladys, not only am I coming, I’m bringing the chips and salsa. ”

“Excellent. I’ll be whipping up some margaritas. Cinco de Mayo isn’t much of a holiday in Mexico, but any excuse to drink margaritas and blast Maná songs is just fine by me.” She gave me a look that told me she was going to say something she wasn’t sure I was going to like. Though she’d only been a constant in my life for the last three months, I knew the woman well enough to read her expressions by now.

I shoved my new cell phone into my back pocket and prepared myself.

“Kinda thought you might be spending the evening at Ronan’s Pub. Aren’t you two … together?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

We’d slept together a month ago, albeit platonically, had a heavy petting session in the park, and generally lusted after each other like teenagers at their first prom. When I went missing for a day last month, he’d been panicked, according to Ida. He’d called to check on me for a couple of days after I moved in, and we’d made loose plans to have dinner, but those plans never materialized and, though he texted me goodnight every night, we hadn’t actually spoken in a week.

“Now why would I want to drive into La Paloma for margaritas when I can get them here?” I asked, deflecting the question.

Gladys, bless her, let me get away with it. “Well, I, for one, am glad you’re coming. Wine nights on the porch are more fun with you there.”

“Let’s be honest. They’re more fun with Cecil there.”

She grinned, deftly flipping her racket from hand to hand. “That’s the truth. You know, I can’t understand a word that gnome says, and yet I know exactly what he means. Is that his magic?”

Was it? Cecil was fae, and the fae possessed magic that didn’t abide by any natural laws I was aware of, but it wasn’t as if I knew every form of magic, either.

“Maybe. Or it could be that you’re learning to read his hand gestures—gods help you, because they only get worse. ”

“Not like I don’t use the same ones myself,” she said, her laugh husky and deep. “Especially in traffic.”

We chatted about the get-together for a few minutes more, and then she took off for Ida’s and I headed for my garden room.

The garden room stood in the shade of two flourishing kurrajong bottle trees, a monument to our love and respect for the earth. Mom and I’d constructed the shed walls with old windows we’d found at flea markets, garage sales, and junk heaps. The peeling paint, rusted window locks, and cracks in the glass had only added to the charm. The floor was a lovingly disorganized array of unglazed clay tiles fitted together just right.

Yet another of Mom’s mosaics.

Our sole concession to modernity was the tinted corrugated polycarbonate roof that let the right amount of light inside. The doors were propped open with grapefruit-sized rocks. Scaled to Cecil’s height, they were boulders, and yet, like Sisyphus, he rolled them in and out as the needs of the plants dictated.

He was a phenomenal gardener, a pretty good dancer, and an absolute terror of a work partner.

I stepped inside, my foot barely touching the floor before I was forced to drop the treats and berries and duck a flying spade aimed at my head.

“Stop throwing things,” I snapped. “Use your words, Cecil.”

Animated chittering, like an Alvin and the Chipmunks song on double speed showered over me. Then water showered over me.

“Turn off the hose. I have about five outfits total right now, and four of them are in the hamper.” I put my hand up as I powered forward, doing my best to block the water from hitting my face. “I do not want to have to redo my makeup, either. Give me that.”

We wrestled with the hose over an herb planter, both getting drenched in the process.

“What’s your deal? Why are you so enraged today?” I thought about it then added, “ Extra enraged.” Cecil was usually annoyed about something. “At me. ”

Fennel stretched his lithe black body, shuddering from ears to tail. He planted himself between my feet and let out a very deep, “ MEOW .”

Cecil instantly backed off. He scurried down the leg of the planter and up the leg of his worktable. At the top, he swiped off his purple hat and wrung it out over the side. I was fairly sure I’d never seen his bare head before, because I was shocked at the amount of thick white hair he had beneath that little hat. For some reason, I’d expected him to be bald. But no, his hair was the same color and density as the beard that bristled from beneath his bulbous nose and brushed his chubby bare toes.

“My jeans are soaked. Damn it.” I stomped out of the garden room. “The only thing I have left in the closet is a bathing suit and the dress I wore to Sy’s funeral.”

Beta wolf Sylvester Shaw had gone missing last month, only to be found—by Cecil, Fennel, and me—buried beneath the patio of one of his many lovers, Annabelle Rossi. Annabelle hadn’t actually killed him. He’d had a post-coital myocardial infarction. Still, she’d paid a steep price for attempting to hide his body after his heart attack.

Killing her was several steps too far for me, but I didn’t have any sway with the pack. In fact, I was Alpha Floyd’s enemy number one. Or two.

At least in the top five.

Sy had been a Pallás beta, which meant he was one of Floyd Pallás’s wolves. Not that Floyd gave two shits about his betas, but this had been about saving face. He couldn’t allow such an egregious and very public insult to one of his pack go unpunished. The Smokethorn County shifter community would view it as weakness and the buzzards would start circling overhead.

Literally. A wake of the birds resided between La Paloma and the town of East Pluto, and they could be downright vicious.

And as if the whole damn thing wasn’t complicated enough, Ronan, also a Pallás wolf, had gone against a direct order when he’d hired me to find Sy. A direct order from his alpha leader, who also happened to be his father.

The men were far from close, Ronan having only met him in person a few years ago, but it was still a weird situation, and I’d ended up smack in the center of it.

As if on cue, my cell phone buzzed in my back pocket. I’d set it to silent earlier and hadn’t bothered to turn the ringer back on. If it was important, the caller could text me about it like a functioning human being.

When Ronan Pallás came up on the screen, I declined the call and sent it to voicemail. I was in no mood to talk. After his goodnight text last night, I’d tried to call, and he’d sent me to voicemail.

I’d made excuses for him—he was probably behind the bar and it was too loud to talk, he’d gotten busy serving drinks, he was breaking up another ogre fight—but he could’ve texted me back to let me know he’d call as soon as he could, and he hadn’t.

He’d chosen to ignore me.

I texted him the middle finger icon and shut down my cell.

Childish, I know. But, if the man couldn’t see with his own eyes what a godsdamn catch I was, I wasn’t going to clean his glasses for him. I was too secure in my worth to play games with the likes of that wolf, no matter how good he looked in a pair of gray sweatpants.

I thought back to the way those sweats stretched beautifully over his groin and thighs, and had a moment of weakness, but I didn’t turn my phone back on. Instead, I set it on the charger and stripped down, threw my wet clothes into my dryer, and went to find the only clean clothing I had left besides my funeral dress and pajamas—my bathing suit.

The fire had taken everything from me, important things like my plants, family photos, and my emergency stash of cash, but it had also taken things I hadn’t thought about until I’d needed them. Makeup, toiletries, lingerie, jeans, old concert T-shirts, and my laptop. Magic books I’d collected. Thankfully, Ida had borrowed some of my most expensive ones before the fire, so they were safe.

That was something.

The fire, and my subsequent kidnapping, had taken something else from me, too. Peace of mind.

No one ever thinks something like that will happen to them. I’d been lulled into a false sense of security due to the protection spell I regularly cast on the Siete Saguaros, but the spell was meant to protect people, not things. If hit hard enough, it would stop defending our homes and focus tightly on defending our lives.

My kidnapper had been a curse talker, and as a result, he’d spelled me with his voice to leave the safety of the park. There was nothing the protection spell could do to stop something like that. Before, anyway. Cecil, Fennel, and I were working on an addition to the spell that would guard against that happening again.

I upended my hamper over the washing machine, figuring that as long as I was drying my clothes, I might as well start the washing, too. It was nice to have my own set instead of hauling my stuff to Ida’s. The stackable washer/dryer duo had been one of my first purchases for the cottage after moving in. That, and a mage spell that repelled fire. Cecil had cast one, too, but it never hurt to play it safe. I’d learned that the hard way.

My bathing suit was one of the more fashionable items I owned. It was a pinup-girl style one piece halter—black with red hibiscus flowers. I’d ordered it right before the fire and made Ronan pay for it. Ida had surprised me with a red silk camellia hair clip for Galentine’s Day that would look stunning with it.

Then I remembered that it, too, had been lost in the fire.

Damn. The losses kept sneaking up on me.

I’d killed the man responsible—not because he’d burned my house down or kidnapped me, but in self-defense. Another thing I was coming to terms with.

Once my laundry was going, I stomped back to the garden room in my bathing suit to have it out with Cecil .

“What is your actual problem, gnome?”

Cecil, who was back at his workstation, turned slowly to face me. The little stinker was completely dry, of course. Fae magic.

“ Meow .” Fennel leapt onto the chaise lounge beside a frothy pot of lavender and squared off with us both.

“See, this is where our lack of a single common language fails us. You’re angry, and I don’t know why,” I said to Cecil, “and the only one who can explain why is Fennel. The problem is, I don’t speak cat. I can pick up broad ideas, but the fine details sometimes get lost. We really need to figure something out.”

He wadded up the piece of paper he’d been standing on and threw it. It bounced off my forehead and landed on the floor. “Real mature.”

I picked up the paper and smoothed it over my knee. There were drawings on it, pretty good illustrations, actually, in a series of boxes. Sort of like a comic strip. Cecil and Fennel in their beds. A woman in a black pointed hat, who was obviously me, scooping up Fennel and walking out. Cecil staring after us, a tear trickling down his cheek.

Oh.

I’d hurt his feelings by not asking him to accompany us this morning.

I sighed. “Cecil, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked if you wanted to come.”

He gave me his back. Didn’t even chitter. Just turned and started messing around with a sprig of rosemary.

“I don’t have any other jobs today, but I need to stop by Wicked to talk to Bronwyn, and I’m dropping some charms off at Beau’s and a couple other places. Would you like to accompany me?”

A blip of a chitter. A shoulder shrug. A sprig twirl.

“We can stop by the market on the way home and pick up some Four Lokos and another container of raspberries to replace the ones I dropped.” I offered this, knowing full well he was powerless to resist fresh fruit and sugary malt beverages. “You’ll have to keep out of sight around humans, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

He spun around, his purple hat bouncing up and down. His version of an enthusiastic nod.

“Pace yourself, though. We’re partying on Gladys’s porch tonight. We don’t want things to get rowdy.”

Cecil snickered.

“Okay, fine. We don’t want things to get bad rowdy,” I said. “I think we could all use a little good rowdy in our lives.”