Dead on Delivery (12 page)

I grabbed my purse and shoved Neil Bossard’s box into it and headed out the door. All the way down to Old Sacramento, I kept repeating to myself, “There’s no one behind you. There’s no one behind you.” Giving in to the sensation would only make it stronger.

Magic existed whether we wanted it to or not, but believing in it definitely made it stronger. The less power I gave whatever was in the box, the less power it would have.

It wasn’t easy, though. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up so hard that I felt like needles were being poked into me. A spot between my shoulder blades itched with the sensation of eyes boring into it. In my determination to not look behind me, I nearly creamed into another car changing lanes to exit onto J Street and drive into Old Sac. The horn blared and I nearly jumped out of my comfy seat in the Buick. Maybe not using my rearviews was taking my don’t-look-back dictum a little too far.

I managed to make it into McClannigan’s without a traffic accident or tripping over my own feet, but only just. I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked in and Paul looked up and saw me. If there was anyone I’d trust to have my back, it was Paul.

Well, as long as the Pack didn’t ask him to do something at the same time. Then I was probably screwed.

I plopped down on a bar stool. The place wasn’t as crowded as it had been when I’d come with Ted the last time. Even McClannigan’s was a little slower on a school night.

“You look worried,” Paul said.

“I feel worried. I’m just not sure what I’m worried about.”

He poured me a club soda with a twist of lime. I didn’t argue, but I did look at it sadly. He added a maraschino cherry. I sighed. He added a triangle of pineapple. I looked up at him and fluttered my eyelashes. He added a wedge of orange. I figured that was the most I was going to get out of him and started to munch on the fruit.

He was right most of the time. Alcohol wasn’t exactly a good refuge for me. I didn’t need anything that was going to make me a step slower or delay my reflexes even a fraction of a second. As unsettled as I felt tonight, I was fine with the club soda. I did like to get what little I could from him, though. A little fresh fruit seemed the least he could offer as a concession.

I felt more settled watching people come and go behind me in the big mirror behind the bar. The prickle of unease was still there, but it was lessening.

Ted got there before Meredith. I hardly needed the mirror to know he was in the room, though. I’d like to think my first hint was the subtle pickup in the speed of my pulse, as if I reacted to him even when I wasn’t even fully aware that he was there. But it could also have been Paul lifting his head and sniffing the air. Ted did smell really good, like cookies baking on a cold day. It was sort of a vanilla-y thing. Of course, Paul could have also sensed the speed up in my heartbeat and be looking for its cause. Shapeshifters had crazy good senses that made even my heightened perception look like night goggles from a Cracker Jack box.

Either way, Ted walked up behind me, landed a kiss on the side of my neck and I felt another little notch of tension give way. I knew Ted had my back whether a Pack called him or not. I was his Pack and he was mine. Of course, he didn’t have superhuman powers, but I’ll take loyalty over super-strength on almost any given day.

Almost, mind you. Sometimes there’s nothing that can trump super-strength.

Paul pulled a draft beer for Ted and slid it to him across the bar. I considered grumbling for form’s sake but didn’t. Paul would be plenty annoyed with me when he found out why I was here. I didn’t need to pre-piss him off.

“How’s your arm?” I asked Ted.

He flexed it. “It’s okay.”

“Can I see?” I reached for it.

He pulled away and shook his head. “Not here.”

“What did you do to your arm?” Paul asked.

“I was bitten by . . .” Ted look over at me, clearly at a loss. Apparently information didn’t stick with a person well when they were feverish and half out of their head.

“A cadejo,” I finished for him. “Or, more likely, the son of one.”

Paul sniffed again. “Black?”

I nodded.

“What are you doing for it?” He leaned in.

“Alex prescribed an antibiotic and Norah had some powdered slippery elm to pack into it.”

Paul arched a brow at me and grinned. “Norah had powdered slippery elm? What’s up with that?”

I sighed. “She’s still freaked out. I lent her my copy of the grimoire. I thought if she had some real information about what she should be frightened of, she wouldn’t have to be frightened of everything.”

“Not bad thinking, Melina.” Paul looked at me appraisingly.

“I am more than a pretty face,” I agreed.

I was still deciding how to broach the subject of why we were really here when Meredith walked in.

Paul’s head had risen when he’d scented Ted. When Meredith entered the bar, Paul’s head snapped up like it was spring-loaded. I watched him watch her walk through the room. His face was a study in conflict. I saw desire and irritation and guilt and anger play across the handsome planes of his face before it settled into the grumpy frown he wore most of the time when Meredith was in the room. I’d be grumpy, too, if my undies were in that much of a twist. I wished I understood what had bunched his up that much.

Ted poked me and gave me a “what gives” kind of shrug. I shrugged right back. I had some suspicions but really didn’t completely understand what was going on between those two.

She slid onto the bar stool on the other side of me and gave me a quick squeeze. “How are you, darling? Feeling okay?”

Meredith had been around when Mae had died. While Paul and Alex had been sympathetic, Meredith seemed to go that extra step. I wondered if in addition to her skills as a witch she was also an empath. It certainly wasn’t unheard of.

“I’m okay.”

“Are you sleeping?” she asked.

I shot her a look.

She made a little face back at me. “I know you don’t need much, but you do need some.”

“I’m fine, Meredith.” I turned to Ted. “Tell her I’m fine.”

“She’s fine.” He echoed.

Meredith shrugged. “Good. You’re fine. Case closed. Why am I here?”

“Yes.” Paul leaned across the bar and bared his teeth a bit at me. “Why is she here? Why do you always have to meet her here?”

I had originally thought that Meredith had always wanted to meet at McClannigan’s because it was a handy excuse to see Paul. The desire on his face when she walked into a room was so obvious, not to mention the musk rising off both their bodies the second they were around each other, that it seemed like a pretty clear-cut goal to me.

Then I’d watched Meredith walk a hedge circle in the storeroom one night.

While I’m pretty sure that Meredith was happy to remind Paul on regular intervals exactly how much he wanted her, I was also reasonably certain that there was a center of some power under McClannigan’s.

There are places of power. Everyone knows about the energy vortices in Sedona and the Haleakala Crater in Hawaii. Those are big kahunas. There are also smaller areas of power all over the place. Everyone’s felt them. That corner of the house where you feel especially cozy. The spot near the street corner where you’re always nervous. Maybe even that particular seat at the movie theater that makes you want to make out with your boyfriend. Most of us shrug them off as moods or ambience or figments of our imagination.

They’re not.

They’re real. Sometimes it’s possible to trace back how a spot became a place of power and why. Sometimes it’s not. There’s an alley near an old record shop in Sacramento where a girl committed suicide back in the fifties. My flesh rises up in goose bumps every time I walk past it. I don’t know if it became a place of despair because she committed suicide there or if she committed suicide there because it was a place of despair. I just know I’ll walk more than a few blocks out of my way to avoid walking there.

In the back of McClannigan’s, there’s a source of power that Meredith is adept at bending to her own whims and ways. How it got there, I can’t say. Whether the fact that Paul has been a bartender at McClannigan’s for going on one hundred and thirty years now has anything to do with safeguarding this particular place of power or not, I can’t say either, although I have my suspicions.

I took the box out of my purse and plopped it onto the bar. “I wanted you to look at this.”

She did. Literally. In fact, we all did. The four of us sat there at the bar and stared at the little box like it was suddenly going to start doing tricks.

“Can I open it?” Meredith asked, looking up at me.

“Be my guest.” She reached for it and I stopped her hand with mine.

“I’m not sure you want to do it right here on the bar, though. The man whose bed I found this under committed suicide.” I thought about it for a second. “Well, he ran out into traffic in front of a speeding semi. It sounded pretty suicidal. Something’s not right with this, though.”

Meredith nodded. “Let’s take it to the back room.”

I swept the box back into my bag and we stood up. Ted stood also, as if he were going to follow us. Meredith shook her head. “Not you. You wait here.”

He looked like he was about to protest, but I shot him a look and he sat back down. He did know when to pick his battles.

Paul merely growled at us as we walked away. “Clean up after yourselves back there.”

Meredith had me sweep the area under the one swinging lamp back in the storeroom. “Set the box in the center.”

I did, nearly dropping it. I didn’t like to hold it in my hands. Something about it felt very wrong.

Then Meredith began to walk her circle. Three times she went around, murmuring her spell as she went. Each time, I felt the magic of her hedge circle grow. By the final circle, I could see the trail of bright blue light behind each of her footsteps. Her auburn hair crackled around her head and the fine alabaster of her skin glowed. Her eyes were shadowed dark circles in her pale face.

Kneeling next to the box, she crossed and uncrossed her arms over it three times. “Three times the circle I have connected. I beseech you, Goddess, to be protected. I’ve cast my sight in the directions four. Let this object have power no more.”

Then she opened it. From outside the circle, I held my breath. Inside the wrapping was a simple cardboard box. Nestled inside that on a bed of cotton was a little doll, no more than six inches tall. It was crude. The body was no more than a fabric suggestion of a body with arms and legs. The face was drawn on with a marker and looked more like a skull than any individual person. The most notable thing about it was the fact that the head faced backward, looking over its own shoulder, as if something were following it.

 

 

MEREDITH HAD RECALLED HER CIRCLE, STEPPING BACKWARD carefully over the outlines. We crouched over the doll.

“Voodoo, Meredith? Who around here practices voodoo?” I asked. It was a foolish question and I knew it. One of the things I loved about northern California was that you could find anything here. Anything at all. Everyone from all four corners of the known world had emigrated here at some point. For the weather. For the opportunity. For the gold. For the computers.

And one of the things that made me crazy about northern California was that everything was here. Everyone who came brought their gods and goddesses, their angels and their demons. There would be someone here who practiced voodoo.

Meredith shook her head. “Not voodoo. Or not voodoo per se.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked up at me, her head cocked to one side. “
Per se
is a Latin phrase. It means ‘by itself.’ ”

I glared. “I didn’t want a grammar lesson. I wanted to know what you meant by that.”

“This doesn’t look like a classic voodoo doll. It doesn’t feel like it either. This has something else going on with it. Can’t you feel it?”

She was right. I could feel it. It didn’t have the sort of tropical feel that I associated with voodoo. It had more of a spice to it. “Santeria?” I suggested.

She shook her head again. “No, but not far off. You don’t know who made it?”

I thought of the woman in the cemetery. The one with eyes full of tears and a heart full of hate. “Not really.”

“What do you want to do with it? It’s a powerful little poppet.” Meredith looked at it with interest.

Didn’t I know that? “What would happen if we threw it away?” I looked as closely as I could at it without touching it. Whatever cooties it had, I didn’t want. It looked a little like I remembered Neil Bossard looking. Tall. Brown hair. It was holding a little guitar. Maybe it was specific enough to him that we could just toss it in a garbage can and walk away.

Meredith winced. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It may have been intended for a particular person, but there’s enough mojo on this thing to affect anyone around it. Have you felt it?”

“You mean, did I wake up in the middle of my living room fighting off an imaginary devil dog and spend the whole day thinking something was following me? As a matter of fact, yes.” I sat back on my heels.

She raised her eyebrows. “And you have some knowledge about what you’re dealing with. Imagine what havoc this thing would wreak bouncing around the average neighborhood.”

I did not want to imagine. It sounded nasty. I’d rather think about rainbows and unicorns. “So how do we get rid of it?”

“That will take some doing, but I think we can do it tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “We’ll need to gather up some things, but we should have enough time before midnight.”

Good thing I didn’t have to work at the hospital tonight. Since I’d taken over the dojo, I’d cut my hours down there and didn’t need to be in at eleven tonight. “Let’s do it, then.”

“Go get a clean white-linen napkin from Paul. And I do mean clean. It needs to be fresh from the laundry. Then we’ll head down to the river.”