Demon Hunting In the Deep South (5 page)

Addy put her arm around Evie’s shoulder. “He means the Sweet Shop, chicka. If they’re still serving by the time we get there. It’s past two o’clock now, and they’re closed from three until five.”

Evie hung back. “But . . . y’all don’t want to be seen in public with me. I’m a murder suspect. People will talk.”

“So what if they do?” Addy’s dark eyes sparkled with indignation. “People are always gonna talk about something, especially in a small town. But you can’t let that stop you. You look them right in the eye and dare them to say something to your face.”

“As much as it pains me to admit it, she is right, Miss Douglass,” Ansgar said. “You cannot let the wagging tongues of others chart your course.”

“And if they say anything about my BFF where
I
can hear them, I’ll hoo doo ’em.” Addy made a twirling motion with one hand. “See how they like that.”

“Adara, you are Dalvahni now,” Brand said. “You cannot use your powers to torment the weak. It is not our way.”

“Wanna bet?”

Evie made a sound of distress. “Meredith! Oh, Addy, you gave her butt boils last summer ’cause she was ugly to me.”

“You remember that, Eves?”

“Of course I remember. Why wouldn’t I?”

Addy shrugged. “Nothing. Your memory has been a little patchy lately, that’s all. Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

Evie looked around. “Darn it. I don’t have my purse. I must have left it in the sheriff’s office.”

Addy nodded. “We’ll get the van and meet you and Ansgar out front.”

“But—” Evie began, sounding rattled. But Addy and Brand had already gone.

Evie slid him a nervous glance. “It’s all right. You don’t have to wait for me.”

The thought of being alone with him, even for a moment, frightened her. The knowledge was like a punch in the gut.

“But I insist.” He added a pulse of power to the words.

A human female would have melted in a puddle of feminine compliance under the strength of his spell, but Evie’s eyes merely widened. She was Dalvahni now and able to resist him, Ansgar reflected with chagrin.

“O-okay,” she said, looking slightly dazed. Perhaps not quite so immune after all. “I won’t be but a minute.”

She disappeared through the swinging door and returned a moment later with her bag.

“Here it is.” Her cheeks were bright pink. “Sorry to make you wait, Mr. Dalvahni. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

“Please. Call me Ansgar, Miss Douglass.”

He was rewarded with a shy smile. “Only if you call me Evie.”

He stepped closer, breathing deeply of her sweet scent. She smelled of honeysuckle and goat’s milk. “Evie is the name of a frightened, lonely girl. Evangeline is a beautiful, strong woman. You are Evangeline.”

Her startled gaze flew to his. “Oh, that’s right! You called me that this morning at the mill when . . .” The color rose to her cheeks and she added breathlessly, “When you rescued me. Thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary. I was doing my duty.”

“But how did you know? I mean, what brought you to the mill?”

Because I need to be near you, pathetic thing that I am. To breathe the air you breathe. To bask in the scent of your skin and the sound of your voice. To know that you are safe.

“I was following the djegrali.”

Not entirely a lie. He had sensed something evil stirring.

“A demon?” She wrinkled her brow. “Oh, I see. You were hunting. Addy’s told me all about the Dalvahni. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Hunt demons, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Lucky for me you were there this morning. Well, thanks again for helping me.”

“You are most welcome, Evangeline.”

She lowered her eyes. “H-how do you know my name?”

“Adara told me.”

Another falsehood. He knew her name the first time he saw her. It was engraved upon his heart.

“Of course. I know it’s crazy, but I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.” She darted him a quick, shy glance. “But we’ve never met, right?”

The truth would not do, but neither could he stomach another lie.

“Had we met before, I assure you I would not forget you.” He gave her a slow smile infused with his considerable Dalvahni charm. “I, however, appear to be less memorable.”

She blinked up at him in delightful confusion. “How silly of me! Of course we’ve never met. I would remember, wouldn’t I?”

“It pleases me to think so.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

She blushed and took his arm. The universe seemed to shift, and something clicked into place. After the long months of darkness, he was back at her side. It felt right.

As they started for the door, a short, plump woman burst into the Sheriff’s Department and tottered up to the front desk on a pair of high-heeled boots. She wore her hair shaved close in the front and long in the back. The bristles at the top of her scalp were bright pink, fading into stringy, yellow locks that fell below her shoulders. A tight top displayed her fleshy arms and overflowing cleavage, and her stocky legs were encased sausage-like in shiny, form-fitting black breeches that ended below the knee. This vision of oddness carried a writhing furry lump under one arm. The lump was conical at one end. An alarming noise emanated from the depths of the cone, like the slathering growl of a rabid wolf.

More like a pack of rabid wolves, Ansgar decided, his warrior instincts roused.

Or a demon.

The creature swung its head in his direction, giving Ansgar a glimpse of glowing, yellow eyes. A demon, right enough, though smallish in size. But the djegrali were sly and took many forms.

He barked out a command, and his bow appeared in his hand. Readying an arrow, he stepped in front of Evie.

“Hold, demon spawn,” he said in a thunderous voice. “Release the human or die.”

The woman in the boots screeched and clutched the demon to her bosom. “Mothertrucker, who are you?”

The door to the ladies’ room opened with the sound of rushing water, and a steely-eyed matron with a towering poof of gray hair marched out.

“What in tarnation’s going on?” she demanded. “Can’t a body twinkle around here without the whole place breaking out in crazy?”

“Beware,” Ansgar said grimly. “That woman has a demon.”

“What are you, high?” The gray-haired woman glared at him. “It’s a Chihuahua. Get rid of that bow
now
before I call a deputy.”

Chihuahua. A small breed of dog with large, pointed ears popular with humans.

“Oh.” Ansgar lowered his weapon. “That is different.”

Chapter Five

T
he woman with the dog rounded on Ansgar. “What is your problem, mister? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, picking on a poor, helpless little pooch.”

Evie eased around Ansgar to get a better look. Pink Converse boots, the woman with the mullet from hell wore pink Converse boots. Crushed against her ample bosom was a gunmetal blue Chihuahua with an inverted lamp shade on its head. The dog’s eerie golden eyes shone at the bottom of the cone, and its mouth bristled with an impressive set of gleaming, white teeth.

Helpless? Evie smothered a giggle. That Chihuahua looked about as helpless as a cornered wolverine.

“Don’t you worry, Frodo, Mommy won’t let the bad man hurt her widdle Precious,” Mullet Woman said, cooing into the cone. “Even if he is sex on a stick and so fine he makes Mommy think about abandoning our No-More-Men-Because-Men-Are-Scum-Sucking-Low-Life-Two-Timing-Weasel-Dick- Bastards resolution. The one we made after Daddy runned off with Brittany, the husband-stealing ’ho from Loo-zee-anna.”

Ansgar slung the bow across his back. “I did not realize the creature was a dog with that contraption upon its head.”

The elegant weapon he carried was hand carved of pale, gleaming wood, beautiful and deadly like the man who wielded it. The bow had scarcely settled across his wide shoulders when it faded and vanished from view.
Poof!
It was gone, just like that, and the quiver of arrows with it. She darted a startled glance at the other two women. They were too busy gawking at Ansgar to notice his little magic act, thank goodness.

An image of Ansgar dressed in leather warrior garb flashed through Evie’s mind. She frowned, trying to hold on to the scrap of memory, but it was gone.

A ripple of unease shook her. How could she have a memory of Ansgar when they’d met less than an hour ago?

Shaking off her disturbing thoughts, she stepped forward and gave Mullet Woman a reassuring smile. “It’s called an Elizabethan collar. Isn’t that right?”

“Stay back.” Ansgar placed his body between Evie and the dog. “The animal is dangerous.”

His sudden movement sent the dog into a renewed frenzy of barking.

“Sorry,” Mullet Woman said over the noise. “Frodo hates men ever since my ex, Travis the Louse, shut the Barker Lounger on his tail. Did some serious nerve damage, although I didn’t know it until later. By the time I realized it, poor Frodo had done chewed off his tail.”

“Oh, the poor doggie,” Evie said.

The Chihuahua threw back its head and howled.

The receptionist clapped her hands over her ears. “Have mercy!”

“Hush, Frodo, hush. For Mommy’s sake, please.” Mullet Woman patted the Chihuahua’s minuscule rump, and the dog’s yowling muted to a rumbling whine. “My bad. He does that ever time he hears the ex’s name. Makes him crazy. I have to spell it out when I’m around him. T-r-a-v-i-s did a number on us both. Broke Frodo’s tail and my heart, and busted my pocketbook all to pieces.”

The receptionist lowered her hands. “This is the Sheriff’s Department, not a vet’s office. Get that animal out of here.”

Mullet Woman wobbled after her, the yapping dog in her arms. “I can’t leave, not until I see the sheriff. Frodo’s in terrible danger.” Her double chins trembled. “Somebody’s trying to kill him. I need me one of them restraining orders.”

The woman at the desk gave Mullet Woman a hard look. “You want a restraining order. For a dog.”

“Not for the dog! For the dog stalker.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Please, Miss . . .” There was a pause as Mullet Woman squinted at the nameplate on the desk. “Uh, Miss Mooneyham.”

“It’s Willa Dean,” the receptionist snapped.

“Well, Willa Dean, if you’ll just listen to me . . .”

Lowering her head, Mullet Woman launched into a spirited discussion with the receptionist.

Evie was riveted by the drama across the room. She jumped when Ansgar touched her on the arm.

“We must go,” he said. “Brand and Addy are waiting.”

“Did you hear that?” Evie worried her bottom lip. “Somebody’s trying to kill her dog. That’s horrible.”

“With good reason. ’Tis a singularly unpleasant creature. We should depart. It is seldom wise to involve oneself in the affairs of humans.”

“You involved yourself in my affairs and
I’m
human,” Evie said. “If you hadn’t been at the mill this morning, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”

“That is different. You are different.”

“She’s in trouble, same as I was this morning. Only she doesn’t have a handsome demon hunter to save her.”

He stepped closer, surrounding her with his spicy cologne. Coriander, she thought in dazed delight, her soaper’s nose working to identify the complexity of his unique scent.
With a little cedar and amber thrown in.

“Handsome? You find me attractive?”

Startled, she looked up at him. He had that hungry, aching look in his eyes again, the one that made her feel dizzy, breathless, and oh-so-wonderful. Like she had wings and could step off the precipice and fly, instead of going splat.

“What, are you kidding?” she said. “Have you seen yourself?”

“That is not an answer.”

Evie stared at him in confusion. Was he playing with her? Teasing the fat girl, like the boys back in school? A spark of anger she didn’t know existed smoldered and ignited.

She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. “You’re gorgeous. Probably the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“I will be the judge of what I need.” He paused, frowning. “What do you mean
probably
the best-looking guy? Is there someone else?” She could swear little red flames danced in his silver eyes. “Are you involved with the Peterson human?”

“How do you—” she began. The sound of raised voices drew her attention to the other side of the room.

“Out.” Willa Dean pointed toward the door. “Take your nasty little mutt and get out. Now.”

“Evangeline.” A shiver of delight coursed from her head to her toes as he placed his fingertips beneath her chin and turned her head toward him. “Are you involved with Trey Peterson?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, why do people keep asking me that? No, I’m not involved with Trey.”

“Good.”

Bewildered, she watched him turn and stride across the room to Mullet Woman, who was still arguing with the receptionist.

“And I’m telling you, I ain’t leaving till I see the sheriff,” Mullet Woman said.

The dog responded to the tension in his mistress’s voice by throwing back his head and yodeling. The cone amplified the sound like a megaphone.

Ansgar loomed over Mullet Woman. “Give the creature to me,” he said. “You cannot converse whilst the thing makes that infernal noise.”

Mullet Woman gazed up at him, her eyes widening in alarm. “I don’t think so, mister. Frodo don’t cotton to men.”

Frodo confirmed this statement by trying to launch himself at Ansgar.

“Fear not,” Ansgar said. “I will have a care to avoid the end with the teeth.”

Mullet Woman clutched the wriggling dog tighter. “No thanks. I got enough trouble as it is.”

“You have my word no harm shall come to the animal.”

“It ain’t the dog I’m worried about. Frodo’s like a grizzly bear when he gets riled up.”

“Trust me,” Ansgar said in a deep-timbral purr.

Wowza, this guy was something else. Evie felt the seductive power of the Voice clear across the room. Poor Mullet Woman was standing at ground zero and looked like she’d been knocked upside the head with a two-by-four.