Dead on Delivery (33 page)

I dropped my head back against the couch. “I am so sick of making that drive.”

“You’re not making it again,” Ted said.

“I have to get there somehow.” Trust me, if I could teleport or something cool like that, I would do it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t get rid of the Buick, though. I love that car.

“No, you don’t. It’s a bad idea. You need to stay out of Elmville.” Ted was shaking his head.

“I would love to stay out of Elmville. I want to go to Elmville about as much as a vampire wants to go to Gilroy during the Garlic Festival. I don’t see that we have a lot of choice.”

“You can’t go back to Elmville. If Chief Murdock catches you—and make no mistake, she will be watching for you—you are going to end up in jail. If she has anything on you, and I do mean anything, I won’t be able to help you. You can’t go back there.” A vein was pulsing in Ted’s forehead. He bit off his words and spit them out, as if they were bitter to the taste.

“Fine. You go, then. When they catch you breaking and entering into Rosalinda’s house, how’s that going to go down with the powers that be at the Sacramento PD? How high do you think you’re going to go in the ranks with a B and E on your record?” I was every bit as steamed as he was. I’m not crazy about being told what I can and cannot do. It’s especially frustrating when there’s nothing more I’d like to do than take his advice and I know that I can’t.

“How do you think it’s going to go down when you get caught? Do you really think it’s going to be any better?” He threw his hands in the air in exasperation.

I stuck my face right into his. “I’m not going to get caught.”

“How do you know?” He wasn’t backing down. Not an inch.

“Because I know how to get in and out of a place without anyone noticing me.” I have been making deliveries of one kind or another for more than twenty years. While it’s often okay to stroll in and hand an item over to whoever’s expecting it, it’s often wiser not to be so obvious. There is the matter of not everyone wanting my special deliveries. Then there’s also the matter of whatever’Danes might be hanging about. Most ’Danes can’t even see a lot of what’s around them. Goblins scurry by. Elves and brownies dart in and out. People catch a flicker in the corner of their eye and think they’ve had their contacts in for too long.

If they see me actually handing an item over . . . well, things become confusing and not in a good way. It’s often best if I slip in and out with no one the wiser, ’Cane or ’Dane. I’ve gotten good at it. As far as I’m concerned, sneaky is the new black.

“Melina, there’s got to be a better way.”

“There isn’t. I will be in and out before anyone even notices that I’m around. Nothing’s going to go wrong, and if it does, I will get myself out of it, like I always have.”

“Always? Really? Are you forgetting I was there when Alex and Paul took out those Triad hit men?”

“Fine. Almost always,” I said. “This is one time that I think a daytime hit is probably a better choice than a nighttime one. I’m going to bed. I think I’m going to need an early start tomorrow.”

WHEN ALL THIS WAS OVER—AND THAT HAD DAMN WELL BETTER be soon—I was never going to drive to Elmville again. In fact, I might go through all my maps and black Elmville out. Or even cut it out. Then I could burn the little fragments. Norah used to occasionally do that with photos after she broke up with a boyfriend. It seemed to really help her forget them.

I totally wanted to forget Elmville.

I was pretty sure that Elmville totally wanted to forget about me. Perhaps it would be cutting up little photos of me and burning them. More power to it.

I try my best to make my errands as little work as possible. I park as close as I can without crowding the disabled and I very much like the shortest distances that exist between two points. That wasn’t going to fly this time.

I needed to not be noticed. The first thing I did was leave the Buick in the parking lot of the Walmart at the edge of town. The parking lot was big and almost always at least half full. You’d have to be looking for my car there to find it. Sadly, the Walmart was a solid five miles from Rosalinda’s house. It was what it was. I threw my backpack on and started to trudge my way along.

I’m a good runner. I’m not a happy runner, but I am a good one. I’m tall enough to have a nice long stride and I can clip along at a pretty decent pace. Running along a road in street clothes with a backpack, however, was going to make me conspicuous. I was all about not being conspicuous at this point. That was going to require some patience, not my strongest suit. I had, however, managed to set the temperature in my car at a comfortable spot on the way down. I could so be taught.

I walked. It wasn’t so easy. I kept my head down and the collar of my jacket up. When I got to Rosalinda’s neighborhood after what felt like a lifetime of walking, I slowed my steps down. As I walked along, I opened my senses wide. If Rosalinda was home, I thought I’d be able to catch a sense of it before I was on the lawn.

The second I let down those mental walls, I was hit with a wave of something completely foul. Instinctively I slammed the doors of my mind shut again. Hard. Even so, I found myself swaying on my feet, barely able to stand. I looked around. I saw nothing. No one.

I took a few deep breaths to steady myself. Whatever was in that house didn’t like me much. Well, maybe not me personally. I didn’t get a sense that it was targeted at me in the few brief seconds that the negative energy had rushed through me like a nasty choochoo train speeding to keep its schedule.

I opened myself again, but this time only a fraction. It was all it took. Rosalinda had certainly armed her home well. I forced myself to not slam shut again. It was a little like trying to breathe through your mouth in a particularly smelly public restroom. It didn’t help nearly as much as I needed it to. Being prepared for it did help a little, though. The first wave had been a shock.

I took a few seconds and let myself become accustomed to the trickle of foul and fetid energy rolling out of the house. I didn’t sense anything alive, ’Cane or ’Dane. That was something, I guess.

I looked around the neighborhood. It was one of those solid lower-middle-class areas, with tidy ranch houses on well-kept lots. Rosalinda’s house was brown, with a brown tile roof, an attached garage and a driveway to the left of the main entrance. There were probably three houses on the block exactly like it. A few certainly looked like they had the same floor plan.

I wondered how many people walked and drove past it every day and never felt the wave of energy I’d felt emanating from it. In the general population, I’d say roughly 8 to 10 percent of people are sensitive to magical and supernatural forces. They may not know how to interpret them or even want to know what they mean, but they feel them.

Even the least sensitive person gets the occasional unexplained chill, which I could probably easily explain to them. Or maybe there’s a corner in the basement that they don’t like going near or a spot in the park that makes them feel uneasy. They don’t know why, but they feel it.

Rosalinda’s house was like all those places rolled together. I glanced around her neighborhood. If someone told me that the rate of divorce was higher in this neighborhood than most, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. I’d bet there were more domestic violence calls, too. I shook my head. How could Emilia have come here without sensing this? What’s more, how could she have sent me into it without a warning?

I sighed and trudged around the block, looking for my best way to perform a little breaking and entering while attracting the least amount of attention.

The neighborhood seemed deserted, which was what I’d hoped for. Everyone was at work or at school. Still, discretion would be the better part of valor. There was no need to call any more attention to myself than necessary. Once I’d satisfied myself that no one was watching, I circled back around to Rosalinda’s house and slipped up the driveway to the back of the house.

The backyard had a large herb garden. I recognized some of the plants. Even in October in California, a person could still have sage, rosemary and mint growing, and Rosalinda did. A witch’s winter garden. How perfectly lovely.

I glanced around. Maybe I wouldn’t have to enter the house at all. People left plenty of bits and pieces of themselves around a garden. You can prick yourself on a thorn and leave a few droplets of blood. A hair can snag on a branch. A nail can break while you dig in the soil. There were probably mounds of Rosalinda detritus all around me. I just needed to find them. I opened my senses a tinier crack more.

Apparently I was becoming accustomed to the energy fields around the house. They made me a little nauseous, but I didn’t feel like they were going to pound me into the ground anymore. I scanned the garden, hoping to find some sort of witch waste, but nothing presented itself to me and I didn’t dare open my senses any wider. If the small amount I was allowing in was making me feel like I’d had one too many margaritas the night before, then opening myself enough to try and find shreds of Rosalinda would have me retching in a corner.

I turned toward the house. I could be in and out in a few minutes. I’d find the bathroom, grab some hair from a hairbrush and be gone before the creepy-crawly sensations seeped into my bones.

At least, that’s what I told myself. It wasn’t like I had a lot of choices.

Rosalinda had locked all the doors and windows to her house, but she hadn’t braced the slider. There’s apparently some kind of rule in California that all bedrooms must have sliding doors out onto the back porch. I tried to think of a single solitary house, no matter its size or neighborhood, that didn’t have this feature. I failed. It didn’t take much to pop the slider off its tracks and slip into Rosalinda’s bedroom. A simple broom handle stuck in the track would have made my life significantly more difficult. It also seemed that any witch worth her weight in eye of newt would have a spare broom handle lying around. As it was, I managed to get in with only a broken nail. I’m not exactly a mani-pedi kind of girl anyway. I figured I’d live.

All the blinds were drawn and heavy curtains had been pulled over those. Despite the sunshine outside, the room was dark. I stepped inside slowly. My feet crunched on something in the dim light inside the bedroom. I crouched. There was a powder on the floor. I dabbed a bit up on my finger, sniffed it and then tasted it.

Salt.

My tongue tingled. Not just salt. Salt with a little something extra to it. Rosalinda had been sealing her home against demons. She’d been doing a hell of a better job of it than Norah had been with our apartment, too.

The same 8 to 10 percent of the general population who could sense the supernatural around them could also probably be trained to do some magic. I’m not talking card tricks at kiddie parties either. Something in them, something special, allowed them access to the various forces and powers around us. The other 90 to 92 percent of us—and I include myself in that bunch—couldn’t cast a ward to save our lives. Norah was firmly in the no-magic bunch. It’s a little like being one of those people who don’t have the right enzyme to taste cilantro correctly, except there are more of us and most of us are less aware of it than we are of cilantro.

I hadn’t had the heart to tell Norah how completely worthless her protections were. She was doing her best. There was no magic in her, though. None. Zippo. Zero. Nada. Zilch. And along with the other 90 or so percent of us, she could pour salt around our doorsills from now until the end of time and demons would be able to waltz right over them with no problem whatsoever.

Rosalinda’s salt, however, was a whole different can of Morton’s. It made my tongue tingle. I’d bet it would make something truly demonic writhe in agony. What exactly had she been messing with that she needed this kind of protection at her home? Or was it just a routine security thing for a
bruja
? I’d have to ask Emilia when I got home.

Normally I would have given my eyes a few more seconds to adjust to the lack of light inside the house, but I wanted out of there as fast as I could. I was keeping all the negative forces at bay, but it was costing me. It was a constant fight to keep myself sealed off, allowing only a trickle of what was there in. It was a little like wandering blind through a forest. The likelihood of me bumping into something I didn’t like was high. Still, I didn’t want to linger.

I made my way toward a door that I hoped was to the master bathroom. It would be the best place to find some bits and pieces of Rosalinda to take to Emilia for her doll. Something snagged at my hair. I sprang away, landing in a fighting crouch.

A dreamcatcher hung in the doorway. I nearly laughed. Of all the cheesy tourist trap items to find in a bona fide
bruja’s
house. A dreamcatcher. You could buy one in almost any store anywhere near any Native American population. Half of them were probably made in China these days. They were nothing but a meaningless gesture meant to reassure little children that they wouldn’t have bad dreams. I knocked it to one side and went into the bathroom.

Jackpot.

It was like a cornucopia of Rosalinda remnants. There was hair in the hairbrush and nail clippings in the trash can. I thought about taking a toothbrush for good measure, but then decided against it. She’d miss that. I was pretty sure I could put the slider back on its track, and if I could, it was possible she’d never even know I’d been there. I gathered up my booty and headed out.

I ducked past the dreamcatcher and stepped over the salt. I was popping the slider back into place when the first crow hit the window next to me. With most of my senses shut down tight, I hadn’t had any warning. Just a sense of something flying way too close to my ear and then the thud as it hit the glass. It was dead before it hit the ground, its head canted at an unnatural angle.

I was still staring at it, lying dead there on the porch, wondering if it meant something, when the second crow headed straight at my head. I ducked. It hit the glass, too, also with enough force to kill it instantly.