Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (19 page)

I added up the equation. If Zandy had figured out that the original vamp went insane, he might be selling that information—along with his blood to some very high bidders. Leverage over vampires would command a very high price. “Does Zandy know the vamp went insane?”

“He offered to accept money to keep quiet, but it is not clear if he thinks the vampire went insane or was destroyed by his blood. Either way, he knows there are those who believe they must master us or destroy us with no middle ground.”

One thing was for certain. Whatever Zandy was up to, it wasn’t good. He would barter with the devil to make a profit. And even if he successfully blackmailed vampires, we all knew he’d still sell the information to the highest bidder if the opportunity presented itself. “Pestilence,” I muttered. “A total pestilence.”

“My enemy is your enemy,” Patrick said softly.

I understood he was offering assistance—or money for information. I opened my mouth to tell him again that I didn’t do business with vampires, but he inclined his head once and then stepped away.

As he always did, he disappeared from one step into the next. He was a shadow, then complete darkness.

Chapter 25

Lynx was, predictably, less than eager to lend his expertise to the project of healing White Feather. He appeared in time for dinner, but because of Patrick’s visit, we hadn’t even started cooking.

I explained how the constructs had been partially embedded and required removal while White Feather was changing his bandages.

“I don’t see why I gotta be involved,” he groused from his spot at the kitchen bar.

“Do you know any other shifters who will do it?”

He snorted. “Okay, I get that part, but why do I gotta work with Tara?”

“Business. It’s business, not the other.”

“See, that’s the thing that makes no sense. In business, I deal with who I want. This family crap, it’s all messed up. I get that you and White Feather are tight.” He grinned. “But you never liked Tara.”

“So she says.”

He grinned his silent laugh. “Nah, I can tell myself. Whenever she’s around, you’re tense and you smell different. Not like fear, but a lot like when you’re about to throw a spell around in a fight.”

Ask a cat for too much information and you get told you smell. “You mean sort of like now because you’re annoying me?”

His eyes glinted. “You’re holding too much worry underneath the annoyance so I know you won’t waste energy throwing anything at me.”

“Will you help or not?”

That shot his humor down. “Can’t your mom do it?”

“What’s the big deal anyway? Didn’t you bring Tara in the other night? Or has she been following you around again?”

His eyes shifted to the kitchen counter. “I called Tara right after you went in the salon. That place smelled bad. That homeless guy, he was fine when he walked in that place, no blood, no worries. When Zandy left, I could smell blood as if they left him to bleed out. I thought maybe Tara could save the guy.”

“You’re positive the guy didn’t have the bloody tats before you followed him? Maybe you couldn’t smell it under the coat?”

“No way. He didn’t have fresh tats when Zandy was feeding him booze. I had to stay downwind so Zandy didn’t catch my scent.”

“Gordon said Tam complained of other times she thought someone used her shop overnight. Why her shop? Could she be guilty? I sensed no magic on her at all.”

Lynx didn’t have an answer for that question. “If Zandy shows up there again, I’ll know.”

“So will Gordon. He’s monitoring the place and checking the employees.” I paced away, trying to keep my nerves from exploding.

“You want me to keep watching Zandy?”

“Probably, but you had better be careful.” I broke the news that Zandy was selling his blood to someone who could use it against vamps. “You have any idea who it could be?”

He came up empty. “No. He’d sell his own blood without caring. Thing is, he doesn’t like risk. He thinks he’s better than humans because he can shift and that makes him faster and sneakier, but I don’t think he cares whether he is better than vamps. Just maybe wants to be richer, but who doesn’t?”

“You haven’t heard anyone else bragging about gaining leverage over vamps?”

He shook his head. “There’s always people who claim they can’t wait to turn, and there’s always haters. I’ll keep my ears open.”

“You need a masking spell that will hide your scent too. If you end up tailing Zandy again, I don’t want him getting his hands on you.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.”

“No sense in taking chances. We have enough people in danger already.” I didn’t let my voice slip, but my hands twitched nervously. No doubt I still smelled near panic because I was.

Lynx followed me to the lab and waited until I invited him in. The lab was usable for such a simple spell if I could locate all the ingredients. Mostly things were still in alphabetical order, but finding the right box might take some time.

Since shelves weren’t up yet, I pulled items from the boxes and arranged them neatly along one wall. “This spell will be similar to the one that allows you to blend in with your surroundings. Which reminds me, I better recharge that one too and combine them.”

“I’m good.”

I didn’t even pause in my search. It had taken me a while to realize that he practiced witchery. He had been watching me for a long time now, and at some point he had decided he could duplicate my spells. There was no sense of earth magic around him, but Lynx was a cat. He was vastly different from me, but enough alike that apparently he could work some earth magic.

“So this family thing. Do they all work like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“The family members.” He waved to encompass an invisible mass of people. “They do stupid things and be forgiven no matter what. So you have to keep working with them?”

I nodded. Then I shook my head. I started to nod again, but decided it made more sense to think it through before answering. “Some families. Some things. I’m pretty sure murder isn’t tolerated in all families. But a lot of other stuff is. It depends.”

“On what?”

Now there was a question. “This has to do with Tara again, right?”

His eyes slanted. “Maybe, but I was wondering about your friend, the water witch. And the cop, and whether she’d take him back.”

“Who told you—” Tara must have spilled the beans, maybe to point out that she wasn’t the only one who made mistakes in relationships. Jim certainly wasn’t hopping up and down telling people about it, not if he wanted to live longer than, say, yesterday.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “Every family starts out with a whole bunch of hope. Everyone is perfect. Only they aren’t. So when you start your own family, you have to pick someone you think you can live with. Someone you trust, who will forgive you for being stupid. And I don’t mean stupid like cheating stupid, I mean mistake stupid.”

“But how do you know when it’s too stupid and you give up and walk away?”

“You don’t know, not really. You draw your own lines. You learn from day to day if this person is paying attention and cares. And if they are stupid all the time or if they just mess up occasionally.” I thought of another problem. “Until you have kids. Then, usually, the kids are so busy being the stupid ones, from what I can see, you want to pick someone who will keep you from killing the kids when they’re stupid. Because that is what families are for.”

“You’re not very good at this stuff, are you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Your family always forgives you?”

“Who says I was stupid?”

Lynx smiled, the ghost of a cat-grin. “Your mom didn’t want you to be a witch. She said your sister hated you for it, too.”

“Huh. Kas doesn’t hate me exactly. She just harbors a few issues because I’m not like her. But she’s still my sister and mostly, she’d defend me if I needed it.”

“And you’d spell anyone who caused her trouble?”

“Absolutely.”

“But what if she asked you not to?”

My mouth twisted. “It depends on whether she really meant no spells or she meant don’t get caught.”

Lynx nodded sagely. “See, that part of family, I get.”

I had no idea whether this conversation was convincing him to help with White Feather or making him more certain he should run away. “With family, you do the best you can. You make it up as you go along and try to turn it into that dream family. But it’s never perfect.”

“It would be better if Tara wasn’t White Feather’s sister. Then maybe you wouldn’t still work with her.”

“Mom thinks Tara can help. For White Feather, I’ll do it. But...yeah.” I closed my eyes. “She’s family now.”

“I’ll do it, but I ain’t gonna like it. And it don’t mean nothin’ about me and her.”

“Tell her that, not me.”

When I finished his spell, I added it to the sachet he carried. If he activated it, he would be very hard to see or smell. I didn’t test either one, but did notice the silver ball I had given him had been replaced with a single gold stud earring.

Lynx put the leather sachet back around his neck. “You can find me with gold or silver, right?”

Since I often used silver to ground, that association came easier for me, but nestled in the packet of herbs I had just spelled, it wasn’t hard for me to sense the gold. “Seems that way.”

“If I don’t want you to find me, I won’t wear it,” he said. “How far away does it work?”

“I don’t know.”

He gave me his slant eyes.

“Seriously. When you left the nail shop the other day, I knew you were gone, but not where you went. When you came back, I knew, but not until I searched.” I frowned. “I can’t remember if I searched because I heard a noise or I was looking anyway.”

He repeated, “Then if I don’t want you to find me, I won’t wear it. You can find any gold or silver?”

I shook my head. Then I nodded. He rolled his eyes. “Well, I think so. But now I associate that gold with you and the packet. So I can search for it specifically. It’s sort of like...well, as if I know what it smells like. Randomly locating bits of silver or gold isn’t all that useful. We need to do this thing for White Feather now. I’ll call Tara and Mom.”

He fingered the packet, contemplating. “Double rates. This is worse than all those daylight jobs you give me.”

“I know.”

“Let’s get it over with,” he finally said. “But we better eat first. I’m weak from hunger and shifting takes a lot of energy.”

I hurried to the kitchen and the phone. “I’ll tell Mom to bring food.”

That improved his attitude. Mom’s cooking was a better enticement than double pay.

Chapter 26

In the end, Lynx offered to chauffeur my mother. “If she doesn’t have enough food, I can pick up extra.”

I wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to be here in case Tara arrived before Mom or if he was hoping for extra food out of the deal. Since it was Lynx, it was probably both, along with ferreting out any new magic tricks Mom might be planning to use on White Feather’s injury. He was not one to waste opportunity.

Tara raced over as soon as I called, arriving before White Feather had even finished showering. He was easily the most reluctant of the bunch, deciding to shower, shave, and change clothes. It wasn’t the plan itself that was the problem; it was the fact that if this plan failed, the alternatives were worse, and we both knew it.

Tara flounced through the front door with a large denim bag that matched her quilted denim jacket. Her hair was almost all natural black now, instead of being dyed super-black. One lock was a shade of silver, but it was a lot more attractive than her previous Goth getup.

She hopped on a bar stool and pulled a tiny yellow flower out of the denim bag. Small leaves were arranged one opposite the other on the stem. “Goathead,” she said triumphantly.

My eyebrows rose. Not too long ago, she had been ready to dump me as a teacher because there were no goats in my yard. I had neglected to clarify that the goatheads mentioned in the typical aphrodisiac were the plant, not an actual goat’s head. Now that she had figured it out on her own, I wasn’t sure whether to be happy she was studying or worried about what she was learning. “Tried it yet?”

She frowned. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

“You mean when you asked about the spell to attract men?”

“You knew.”

I met her stare. “There are better ways to attract men. At your age, trust me, you have enough natural magic. You don’t need herbs. Or potions. Or spells.”

She smiled. “Your mom told me that too. Gave me the longest lecture on sex I’ve ever had, but she skipped all the basics and went right to the important part about chemical reactions and hormones. It was kinda cool actually.”

My memories of Mom’s lecture were not so enthusiastic. “Yeah, well, it boils down to you don’t need the goathead spell. And if you plan to experiment with spells like that, try it on yourself. Don’t inflict it on some poor unsuspecting male who probably needs extra encouragement like another hole in the head.”

Her eyes flicked around the kitchen as she toyed with the stem. “I wasn’t planning on using it on Lynx. Don’t worry. Your mom dumped an earful on me about the responsibilities of using magic, especially healing or poisons. I’m not that dumb.”

“Plus the spell wouldn’t work because it isn’t an attraction problem.” It was rude of me to point that out, but moonlight madness, if she attempted to manipulate Lynx with a potion, if he didn’t kill her, I would.

“There’s not a spell to fix what I did, is there?”

“Sorry might work.”

The goathead weed twirled in her fingers. “I’m not sure he does sorry. I owe him now, and until I make it up to him, we aren’t even.”

I had to agree. “At least you understand the problem.”

“But how do you give someone something when they’ve got everything? And they can shapeshift on top of it?”

She had it bad for him. Lynx was a mystery to me for the most part; I didn’t have any real advice to offer. “I don’t have the answer, but I guarantee you, it has nothing to do with goatheads.”