Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (9 page)

“Ummm,” I said, because I’m crazy articulate when confronted by the teenaged sister of the man my foster sister had dated, eaten, and then killed.

Morana’s glower deepened. She needed to refresh her black eyeliner, which was currently creeping for her cheeks. Also her purple hair dye, which showed at least two inches of ash brown at the roots and was faded to lilac at the tips. Unless, of course, the look was intentional. Paired with the too-large combat boots, it might have been. I hadn’t see the teen since the tribunal had found Rusty guilty — along with Sienna — of the murders of three werewolves, one of which was my could-have-been boyfriend and Kandy’s packmate, Hudson. Ah, just thinking his name still stirred … things better left unstirred.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No.” Well, she spoke. That was good. Maybe.

“Are you looking for me?”

“Did your sister kill my brother after using his siphoned powers to kill werewolves?”

Um, yeah. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

I felt werewolf magic — all earthy dark chocolate with an edgy bitter nose — bloom behind me in the SUV, which was still idling at the curb. Kandy must be transforming. It was too much of a risk to stay in wolf form, even if the streets were dead quiet. No one was going to mistake a hundred-and-twenty-five-pound werewolf for a dog.

I really wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Kandy to meet Morana.

“It’s late, Morana —”

“That’s Novak to you.”

“You go by your last name? What are you, twelve?”

“Fifteen.” Morana spat. Literally. I guessed this was an attempt to be tough, but it was really just gross. I’d have to hose that spot down before I opened the bakery in the morning.

“How about I call you Mort? Or Mory?”

“Lame much?”

Yes, often. But I needed to speed up this insanely awkward bonding session, and the necromancer’s own name felt too heavy for her tiny frame. “Right. It’s, like, after one in the morning, Mory.” I also needed to hurry the conversation along before —

Kandy, clad in Lycra shorts and a tank top, stepped out from the rear passenger seat of the SUV. The glower was wiped from Mory’s face and replaced by fear.

“Who’s this?” Kandy asked. Her voice was crackly from lack of use.

“This is Mory, Kandy. Mory, this is Kandy.”

The teen opened her mouth — brave when faced with a pack member of the werewolves her brother had murdered — probably to protest my use of her first name. I neatly interrupted by actually looking at Kandy.

“What the hell happened to your hair?” I said. My voice was stupidly loud on the deserted street.

Kandy narrowed her eyes, and showed me the tips of her teeth. This was not a smile.

Mory snapped her mouth shut, her face actually blanching. Yeah, werewolves were scary even in human form. Especially this one.

Kandy’s normally vibrant green hair was dull brown. Her short pixie cut had grown out, but she usually kept it gelled or moussed. It was now hanging limp around her eyes and ears.

“Stop staring,” the werewolf said with a snap of her teeth.

I looked away.

Mory’s eyes were saucers. She had that sort of face I associated with cherubs or fairies — large eyes, rounded cheeks —
 

“It doesn’t stick. The dye. When I change.” Kandy ground this information out through clenched teeth. “Is there a problem here?” She looked pointedly at Mory.

Mory turned and looked at me. Kandy didn’t appear to recognize the fledgling necromancer.

“No problem. Except your hair,” I answered.

Kandy snorted and crossed to say something to Desmond, who hadn’t pulled away from the curb yet.

I stepped closer to Mory and she rose up from her sitting position on the stair. Two steps up, and she was barely two inches taller than me. The fairy description held. She was having a difficult time keeping her eyes off Kandy.

“Is that,” the necromancer whispered, “one of your witchy friends?”

“I have no witchy friends. And does she look like a witch?” I followed Mory’s rapt gaze. Kandy was now leaning through the passenger-side window of the SUV. The werewolf was as tall as me, heavily muscled, and lean. So lean that I sometimes joked about her waist being the size of my thigh. It wasn’t much of a joke.
 

She stepped back from the SUV with a gray cellphone in her hand. Her phone was usually green. This was obviously a backup. The SUV pulled away.

Yeah, sweet goodbye McGrowly, old buddy, old kissing pal of mine.

“I need your number again,” Kandy said as she approached. “Just until I get a proper replacement and sync it.” She looked up. “Why is the kid still here?”

Mory shifted from foot to foot. Kandy’s eyes narrowed into predator slits. She lifted her nose slightly in the necromancer’s direction and sniffed.

I didn’t know whether werewolves could smell the connection between blood relatives or not, but the underlying taste of Mory’s magic was very similar to Rusty’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if the werewolf was putting two and two together, and getting pissed off by my casual introduction.

“Your hair,” I mock-whispered, “is seriously freaking me out.”

Kandy laughed, though it was more of a snicker than a guffaw. Then she shouldered by me, nearly knocking the teen off the stairs as she passed. Mory didn’t have much bravado when faced with Kandy, the floppy-haired werewolf, but she seemed to be trying to stiffen her spine now that it was just me. Obviously, she didn’t get that it was worse to have a werewolf behind her than in her face.

“You should call your mom, Mory.” I cast my voice low, even though Kandy could probably have heard me from a block over and down.

“My mom probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone,” Mory said, managing to sneer and sound pitiful at the same time.

“Let’s go upstairs —”

“Don’t pretend to care.”

Kandy stopped two steps from the top of the staircase.

“Listen —”

“I want you to take me to where my brother died,” Mory blurted.

Kandy slowly pivoted. She stood in the shadows between the streetlight and the outdoor apartment light. Green rolled over her eyes. She was accessing some of her werewolf powers … hopefully not claws.

“Mory,” I said, trying to be as kind as possible. “I’m not going to do that.”

Mory glowered and crossed her arms. Kandy took a step down. I looked up to try to catch her eye, but the werewolf was fixed on Mory — probably specifically at the soft tissue where her neck met her skull.

“I just want to speak to his ghost.” Mory was on the edge of pleading. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to resist that.

“Necromancer,” Kandy growled from her perch seven or so steps above us.

Mory stiffened but didn’t turn around. I wasn’t sure that was the correct way to deal with a werewolf. But then, my dealings hadn’t been all that smooth lately, so maybe I was completely wrong.

“Yeah, what?” Mory sneered, directing her answer to Kandy’s question at me.

“Fledgling,” I corrected.

Kandy’s eyes blazed green again. Mory must have seen something in my face because she bit her lip, dropped her eyes, and hunched her shoulders.

“Fledgling,” Kandy repeated. “There aren’t any ghosts around here. Try a graveyard.”

“You’d be surprised,” Mory snipped back, still not making eye contact with the werewolf above and behind her.

Kandy slid two steps closer, her body still in shadow but her fully clawed hand visible in a pool of light on the railing.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s …” What? Calm down? It wasn’t a good idea to tell a werewolf to take it easy. Kandy could be brusque and edgy, but I’d never really worried about her bestial nature, not since it felt like we’d become friends, not until confronted by a fifteen-year-old lavender-haired necromancer —

“Raise any werewolf corpses lately, fledgling?” Kandy asked. Her voice was molten steel.

Mory finally raised her gaze to mine.

“You understand who Kandy is?” I asked her gently.

“I had to come,” the fledgling answered, her voice hanging on the edge of a sob. Her life was obviously a balancing act along that edge as well. “I have to know … if he … if he did those things.”

“If,” Kandy sneered, but she didn’t move closer. “The tribunal sent investigators to the crime scenes.”

“Witches,” Mory said. Her tone made it clear that witches ranked somewhere above pond scum but below slugs in her estimation.

“Impartial investigators,” I said. “Including a necromancer sensitive to —”

“On the payroll of witches.”

I sighed, but noted that Kandy’s hand looked totally human again. Perhaps even the wolf in her recognized the pain in this girl.

“I have the right to face my brother’s accuser. I have first-blood-right to challenge my brother’s killer.”

“Mory,” I said, and then faltered. The pain that laced suddenly through my voice matched that in hers. She had an actual blood connection to Rusty, but we’d both loved our siblings just the same. “Sienna is dead.”

“She’s not dead.” Mory was back to her glower face. I would have thought that someone who looked so much like a fairy would be less belligerent.

“You know the investigators assessed that no one could survive —” Err … wait. The portal wasn’t common knowledge. Its existence below the bakery had been shared only with a few key people — the investigators and a couple of Convocation members — in order to clear Kandy, Desmond, Kett, and me of any wrong doing. “No one could survive,” I said in an awkward and lame attempt to cover myself, “what happened to Sienna … magically.”
 

Kandy smirked. Mory glowered more. So, yeah, I was a bad liar. So what?

“Oh, that bitch is alive.”

I shook my head and looked up to Kandy for help. The werewolf shrugged and, affecting boredom, looked away. Ah, inscrutable shapeshifter games. My favorite. Ranked right below getting knifed by my sister and chased by a vampire.

“Mory, come upstairs.” I was really tired of standing on the sidewalk, and I had to be up in less than three hours to bake.

“She’s alive,” Mory insisted, not budging from her step.

“Yeah, fledgling? Did Casper tell you so?”

Great, now the werewolf was attempting to be witty.

“I have no frigging idea who Casper is. But, yeah, a shade told me.”

“And ghosts can’t lie?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Ghosts, or shades, or spiritual energy — whatever you wanted to call it/them — could lie just as much as the person they used to be. Mory’s shoulders slumped. She looked as pitiful as I felt.

“Come upstairs,” I coaxed.

“Your mother is up there,” Mory said. “I don’t much like mothers right now.”

Point taken. “She’s not that kind of mother,” I answered, and brushed by Mory to climb the stairs. Either the necromancer would follow or I was about to spend the remainder of my allotted shut-eye attempting to dig up her mother’s phone number. I knew that I was the very last person Rusty’s mother wanted to speak to. However, Mory was probably the very first, so hopefully Rusty’s mom wasn’t proficient in death curses.

Kandy preceded me up the stairs, both of us stopping at the landing that branched off east and west to our neighboring apartments. Our floor plans were identical, but Kandy had no actual furniture except for a huge fridge in the living room. Yeah, it didn’t fit in the kitchen. I tripped over the freaking cords every time I ventured in, which was only rarely because Kandy spent all her noneating and nonsleeping hours at my place or in the bakery. She refused to touch anything remotely resembling work, though.

“Do you just stock up on hair dye?” I asked the werewolf, pausing to give Mory time to make up her mind whether to follow me or not.

“Yeah. You think it’s easy to maintain that perfect color?”

I wouldn’t call green the perfect hair color, but now I knew why Kandy’s green always looked perfectly fresh. She had to dye it every time she transformed.

“Yoga tomorrow?” I asked, keenly aware of Mory slowly climbing the stairs behind me. Her magic was much stronger than her brother’s had been. But then, necromancer powers usually followed the female line. She had that same candied-violet undertone I associated with Rusty, layered with toasted marshmallow and buttercream icing. Which gave me an idea…

“All right,” Kandy answered. “But power. Not that wimpy hatha shit. You don’t push yourself enough.”
 

That was a nice summing up of my life story in one snarly sentence. I nodded. “Sleep well.”

Kandy snorted. “Going to have to wax my legs. The bloody hair grows back there every time, too, and I can’t sleep with hairy legs.”

“Didn’t seem to bother you a couple of hours ago.”

Kandy flashed her nonsmile at me. Her teeth were very white in the deep shadows of the landing. I really needed to get more lights installed. The werewolf lifted and tilted the large ceramic pot by her front door. It must have weighed at least seventy-five pounds including dirt and dying bush, but she hefted it as if it was nothing. Apparently, that was where she kept her spare key. I guessed werewolves needed a lot of spares … keys, phones, clothes, and hair dye at least.

Mory sidled up, placing me between her and Kandy. The werewolf noticed and offered another spine-tingling grin. “Don’t let the blondness fool you, fledgling. The witch stabbed a nine-hundred-pound grizzly in the ass today. She just keeps her claws better hidden and painted pink.”

I raked my bright, dark pink OPI-lacquered nails at Kandy. The color — lyrically named
Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot
 — needed a touch up, actually, before I served any customers tomorrow.

Kandy snorted and let herself into her apartment. I noted that she didn’t close the door behind her. Still keeping an eye on the necromancer, I guessed. Or maybe Desmond was staying the night with her, rather than at a hotel as I’d assumed, and was currently looking for long-term parking. I wasn’t sure how I felt about having him easily accessible in the middle of the night.

I turned to let Mory through the wards that protected my apartment. I’d been doing a lot of that lately, letting potentially dangerous people get way too close to me.