Black Magic Bayou (14 page)

He gritted his teeth but finally nodded.

Now I had to hope
tasting my power
was a completely metaphysical process. Santiago and I could work out the finer points later.

I thought of what was in the mortar and pestle and decided it was in my best interest not to explain to Wilder what kind of magic Santiago seemed to prefer.

“All right.” I turned to face the other men again. “You get your magical
amuse-bouche
. Now you.” I jerked my chin towards Cain. “You’ve set your price for the Deerling ordeal. What do you want for this?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“I did ask. Several times.”

“I think you’re going to like this one.” He polished off the last of his wine and put the glass on the counter behind him.

“I doubt it.”

“Ah, Genie. If you think of challenges as adventures, these costs are nothing more than new experiences that will help you grow.”

I rolled my eyes. “Your price, Cain.”

He licked his teeth with a purple, wine-stained tongue.

“I want your mother’s head.”

Everything in my body said it was time to bail.

Get out.

These two were fucking crazy, and I was better off taking my chances alone with the demon.

Then I remembered Heidi’s voice begging,
Please, please, please
. I remembered the eerie dead air in the house and that three girls were gone. I thought of the way Tansy had looked at me like I was her last and only hope, and I groaned.

“I don’t
have
my mother’s head.” Unless nightmares counted, because she had given it to me once in a dream.

“No, but I bet you know where it is,” Cain said.

I didn’t, not down to the marker or anything. My aunt Savannah had been the one who buried Mercy after Secret decapitated her.

But where my mother’s true final resting place was, I didn’t know. Yes, I could find out. But I’d gone a long time without knowing, and I was pretty okay with the idea of keeping it that way.

“What do you want with it?”

“That’s my business.”

“Considering it’s
my
mother’s head, that sort of makes it my business too, don’t you think?”

Santiago, who had already been promised his reward, got bored listening to us and went to the stovetop and moved the saucepot off the burner. He sampled it with his finger and stretched his neck side to side, debating whether or not he approved before giving a nod. He did all this as if he had no audience, and I suspected he didn’t care what we thought.

The man must have heard a lot of crazy shit in his time if an argument over someone’s dismembered head was too boring to listen to.

“I just want it. Why do I want anything, Miss McQueen? I want it so can I have it. So it’s mine and no one else’s. It has nothing to do with you.”

I recalled the familiar way he’d spoken about my family back at the bar and once again wondered if Cain had known Mercy more than he’d let on before.

A nervous-breakdown-inducing thought occurred to me, and I stared at him, searching his face for anything familiar. Anything that looked like…well, like me.

I had no idea who my and Ben’s father was, and if Cain cared so damned much about Mercy’s head, there was a chance he’d known her
very
well. Maybe in a Biblical sense? Maybe twenty-two years ago?

But there was nothing of me or Ben in him, which was both a relief and a disappointment.

Did I want Beau Cain as a father? Fuck no.

Did I want to know who my father was, even if it was someone like Cain?

I mulled that over.

Yes.

Only I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for in the face staring back at me, so he must have different reasons for wanting a dead woman’s head.

“You aren’t going to do anything weird to it, are you? I might not have been on hair-braiding terms with my mom, but she was still my mom. If you’re going to use it in an insane ritual, or you’re planning to defile it in some way, we’re going to need to come to another arrangement.” I paused. “And this is definitely a nonstarter if you’re going to try to use it to bring her back to life or something.”

Santiago snort-laughed as he put a lid on the saucepan. “He doesn’t have that ability.”

“Thank goodness for small favors, I guess. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

Cain gave me a reptilian smile. “No, I don’t plan to use it for any bizarre rituals or anything. I won’t
defile
it and am appalled by the implication in its many different meanings. I simply want it, that’s all.”

“What, you want Mercy McQueen’s skull on your bookshelf so you can recite bits of
Hamlet
to her when you’re bored?” Normally this would be when Wilder reminded me to be on my best behavior, but he was apparently past the point of caring about Cain’s opinion because he didn’t say anything.

He shrugged. “How can I make you believe that the wanting and the having are the only means and end I seek? Nothing more. I’m a collector, not a mad scientist.”

I almost believed him. Almost.

“You say it has nothing to do with me. Which is frankly impossible considering she’s my mother. But answer something honestly for me, because I can’t ignore the connection. You want a knife from my great-grandmother, knowing full well she puts her literal blood into her ceremonial knives. You want the head of my mother.
He
wants my magic.” She pointed to Santiago. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“What are you implying?”

“Are you trying to get some kind of control over me?”

Santiago raised an eyebrow and glanced at Cain. The witch said, “I can’t speak for him, because I’m not him, but I want your magic for myself. Before you, I spent years begging
La Sorcière
to teach me. If you can give me even the smallest sliver of what she could have, it will be worth capturing a thousand demons.” He leaned back against the counter, mirroring Wilder’s earlier pose. With his arms crossed he was showing off his sculpted abs and a trail of black hair that went from his chest all the way down, down, down…

“I am not a magician,” Cain said. “I only want to use you in the sense that you can get me things no one else can, and those are things I want.”

Dammit all, I was dying to know why he wanted the skull so badly. But more than that I was still hearing Heidi’s
Please, please, please
, and knew I couldn’t hold off anymore.

“
Fuck
,” I shouted, balling my hands into fists and hitting the sides of my legs. No one responded. All three of the men watched me carefully, waiting to see what would happen next. “Fine.
Fine
. Let’s just do this.”

“Okay,” Santiago said. “Now go home.”

I saw red. My temper—a werewolf trait I usually managed to keep in check—roared to life, and I was suddenly brimming with the kind of rage reserved for people who snapped in traffic jams or hit strangers. Wilder, who knew me better than either of the other men, sensed the change in me almost instantly, and grabbed me around the waist, hauling me back towards him just as I was about to lunge at Santiago.

The witch gave me an amused smirk, totally unmoved by my near outburst.

My lip curled the way a wolf’s might when it wanted to show a flash of warning fang. Secret, who had once been half-vampire
and
half-werewolf, used to be a pro at this gesture. It helped that she had real fangs to flash, mind you.

I probably looked like a hateful Elvis impersonator.

“We go
now
,” I said back, twisting his words to suit my needs instead.

“No.” Santiago braced his hands on the counter, and all his coy flirtatiousness was gone. “You of all people should know magic isn’t instant. And I can’t make something that will hold a demon in a few minutes. It will take time, and there are things I need that don’t grow in my garden or come from Whole Foods, understand,
brujita
?”

I relaxed my body, and Wilder let go of me, allowing me to smooth my clothes and pretend to be a bit more human than I was. I still wanted to tear off Santiago’s face, and Cain’s too, but now I was less likely to try it.

“Yes.”

“I will need to know what kind of demon it is, as well. They are not one-size-fits-all. There are different spells for each type.” He left the room and came back in a few minutes later carrying a huge leather-bound book the size of an IKEA coffee table. He handed it to me, and it immediately attempted to drag me down. Damn thing must have weighed at least fifty pounds.

The title was written in Latin, but I didn’t need a degree in classics to figure it out.

Liber Daemoniorum.

Book of demons.

The gold-leaf cover image of a snarling monstrosity with fang and horns also helped my translation skills a little.

“Homework?” I looked up from the cover to where Santiago was, back against the counter once more.

He found a notepad in between metal canisters and glass mason jars filled with dried herbs and other less savory things, and scribbled something down on it.

A phone number.

“You find your demon, and tell me what it is. I will figure out how to capture it.”

I wanted to open the book here and get on with it. But I also wanted to get out of this house and away from Santiago. The magnetic pull I’d felt on the street that had drawn me to his front door was even stronger inside. I worried the longer I stayed near him the harder it would become to leave. That sense of helplessness, of losing my free will, was more than enough to make me want to run out the door.

So I didn’t argue.

“Okay.”

We left, Wilder leading the way and Cain following behind us. The whole trip back to my house I held the book closed in my lap, afraid to so much as peek under the front cover. Even as Cain’s limo pulled away from the curb, leaving Wilder and me standing alone together in the cool night air, I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.

“Weird day,” I offered, trying to break the tension that was growing around us like a dark bubble.

He nodded, staring at the street instead of me. Finally, after a long pause, he said, “I should go get our cars.”

Well, he was mad, there was no escaping it. I’d hoped he might pretend what had happened in Santiago’s house was part of a bad dream and ignore it. That’s what I planned to do. But Wilder had a serious air about him that told me we weren’t getting out of this one unscathed.

“The cars are fine. Magnolia can get someone to collect them. Would you look at me?” I felt like an awkward high school girl, clutching my giant book and pleading with him on the sidewalk in front of my house.

He turned, and the hurt on his face was so apparent it cut me to the core. I hadn’t
tried
to do anything wrong, but he’d gotten caught in the crossfire anyway, and the guilt of that was worse than a punch to the guts.

“Wilder. Come inside.”

“No.”

“Come inside,” I said again, more insistent. I could demand it. I could order him to. But I wanted him to come freely.

He breathed loudly through his nostrils then nodded once. “Give me that stupid book.”

Although the weight wasn’t too much of a hindrance thanks to my werewolf strength, I let him take the big tome out of my hands as he followed me to the side door, stomping with each step instead of his usual quiet pace.

Once we were inside, he dropped the book on my kitchen table. The two coffee cups Magnolia and I had used that morning clattered loudly, dancing across the smooth surface. Wilder stalked into the living room and sat on my loveseat, then immediately got back to his feet and started pacing in front of the coffee table.

He was like a wild animal that woke up in a cage for the first time. I’d never seen anyone who appeared so uncomfortable being inside.

I’d been so tired before this all I could think of was sleeping. Now I had a new priority at the forefront of my mind, and that was soothing the savage beast who looked ready to tear my living room to pieces.

“Talk to me,” I urged.

He faced me, standing still but vibrating with energy, and even from my place in the kitchen I could tell his feelings had shifted from hurt to anger. Those two always did share a very thin border with one another.

“He put your
finger
in his
mouth
,” he snarled.

Yup, I figured this was rooted in jealousy and not a concern for my well-being. I got it too; I understood. He had every right to feel the way he did, because I had been in way over my head in Santiago’s house. I don’t know what the witch had done, but it was like a vampire’s thrall. I’d felt things there, with him, that were neither welcome nor normal.

The problem was, I knew Santiago wasn’t entirely to blame, and that’s why I didn’t think it was wrong for Wilder to be mad.

I hated it, and I wanted it to go away, but the things I’d felt were real, whether or not I wanted to feel them. And I could, and
would
, ignore those feelings until they died like a neglected houseplant, but in the meantime I needed to make sure the man in my living room understood there was a big difference between a feeling and an action.

I couldn’t control how Santiago had made me feel, but I could absolutely control what I did about it, and that’s where being a werewolf really paid off. We understood better than anyone how things could fall apart if we gave up control. I might know it better than anyone, because I’d literally blown stuff up.

When it came to what I had with Wilder, I wouldn’t blow it.

I moved closer, clearing the space between us until I was only inches away. This close I had to look up at him, and from here I could
feel
the rage coming off him.

“He did,” I replied. “And I slapped him.”

Wilder raked his fingers through his hair then scrubbed both hands over his face, as if trying to erase the memory of what he’d seen.

“He said he wanted to taste you, Genie. And you agreed.”

I held up one finger. “He said he wanted to taste my magic.”

Wilder groaned and stalked back to the loveseat, dropping down onto the cushions and staring towards the door. “What the fuck does that even mean?”