Interview With a Gargoyle (4 page)

“So DeWitt turns to stone during the day?”

“So I’m told. I’ve never seen him do it. He must have a pretty good hiding place of his own.”

“And you’ve dealt with him before? He seemed to know you back in the alley.”

“We’ve crossed paths. He hunts demon queens, naturally, searching for the one who holds the Cabochon so he can intercept a transfer.”

“If he hunts demon queens and you hunt demons, one would think you’d be on the same team.”

“Well, if he wasn’t looking for someone to take that nasty little curse off his hands, and he wasn’t a stone-cold bastard, things might be different.”

Mel nodded. She really didn’t want to know more about how bad DeWitt was. She already had the heebie-jeebies about him possibly stalking her for a jewel she didn’t have. “How are we going to convince him that I don’t have the cabochon he’s looking for?”

Palmer crossed his arms over his chest. “As soon as it’s light, we should go search the alley again. Are you sure you had it in your pocket?”

“I’m sure…ish. I was about to be bled on by a Gogmar. I really wasn’t thinking clearly. I remember dropping it into my pocket. Then he fell on me, then you shish kebabbed him. End of story.”

“So it’s probably still in the alley somewhere. We’ll find it, and I’ll figure out a way to pass it along to a demon queen. If a Gogmar was walking around with it, there’s got to be a queen somewhere waiting to receive it. Once the transfer is complete, DeWitt won’t be able to do anything.”

“What if he already found it?”

“If he had, he wouldn’t have followed us. He’d be out looking for someone to transfer the curse to.”

“Maybe he just wants to sell it. It looked expensive.”

Palmer shrugged. “Believe what you want. You’re in danger as long as he thinks you have it.”

Melodie checked her watch. Still almost three hours until sunrise. As far as she was concerned, that was way too long.

After filling up his Harley at the Sun Station, Blake returned to the bakery. Fortunately neither the front or back doors were locked, so he had free run of the place. He started with the alley, where little remained of the Gogmar but the faint essence of unwashed carcass and a few greenish smudges on the lower bricks.

Cursing Van Houten, Blake tore through the alley. He searched every piece of rubbish that had fallen from the few plastic garbage cans and even hauled the Dumpsters around on their rusted wheels to look beneath them. He didn’t expect to find the gem out here or anywhere in the vicinity, actually. He’d lost the trail. That strange silvery tingle that had been making the hair on the back of his neck stand up the past few nights had disappeared. An uneasy feeling in his gut told him the transfer wasn’t complete yet, fortunately. He’d know when it was too late to save himself…he would taste defeat. That meant the girl still had the jewel—a point in his favor, and finding her again would be a lot easier than trailing a demon.

A quick recon of the bakery turned up her purse, hanging on a hook in a coat closet next to the employee restroom. Without remorse, Blake filched her wallet and rifled through it. She carried less than twenty dollars, a few pictures of people who appeared to be family, judging by their resemblance, and a MedicAlert card bearing her name. Melodie McConnell—a Scottish lass?

According to her Maryland driver’s license, she was five foot five, a hundred and twenty pounds, and she lived less than a mile away in a small duplex development near the railroad station on Mortimer Avenue.

Satisfied with his snooping, Blake stuffed her things back in her bag. He toyed with the idea of swiping her keys and paying her a visit before sunrise, but if Palmer was worth his salt, he’d be doing everything in his power to hide the girl until then.

Tomorrow night, he’d resume his search for the Cabochon, and now he knew exactly where to begin.

Chapter Four

As promised, Palmer delivered Mel back to Gleason’s at 6:07 a.m., one minute after sunrise. An inch-by-inch survey of the Gogmar-scented alley turned up nothing more gem-like than a few pieces of broken glass and left her eighteen minutes to clean up the mess in the kitchen and concoct a believable explanation of why Arnie would need to bake a brand-new moose for the Lodge Initiation Dinner.

Palmer gave her a sympathetic look when her shoulders drooped. “I’ll help you. Give me a dustpan, and I’ll work on the cake crumbs. For what it’s worth, it looked delicious.”

Without preamble, she handed him the dustpan. While he collected Marty’s remains, Mel mopped up the water from the double boiler and chipped hardened sugar off the countertops and the floor.

Despite Palmer’s wild story about DeWitt’s curse, or maybe because of it, she found herself feeling a little bit sorry for the guy. He hadn’t seemed all that evil, and she imagined being turned to stone, for even part of the day, had to put a major dent in one’s social life. Could she really blame him for wanting to foist that burden off on someone else?

She shook her head as she dumped sugar in the trash. Right now she needed to concentrate on keeping Arnie from freaking out. She needed to stop worrying about there being a cursed witch hunter on her trail, at least until night fell again. By then, hopefully, someone would use a little pixie dust on her and make her forget all this ever happened.

Palmer finished his cleanup, left her a card with his number on it and made himself scarce barely seconds before Arnie arrived. To Mel’s shock, Calypso strolled in on his heels, looking fresh as a daisy in her thigh-high boots and leather skirt. Over those she wore a man’s button-down shirt cinched at the waist with a yellow-and-black-striped silk tie. The shirt’s crisp white collar was turned up to hide the runes tattooed on the sides of her neck.

Cal had a sixth sense about her, and though she hung back while Arnie and Mel exchanged pleasantries and discussed his morning’s coffee-buying adventure, the moment he wandered into the back to get started on his next culinary masterpiece, she pounced.

Her kohl-rimmed eyes bore into Mel’s. “You’ve been fooling around, haven’t you?”

Torn between wanting to confess to the only person who might have half a chance of believing her and wishing the whole sordid evening would go away, Mel gaped. She decided a good offense was the best defense and turned the tables rather than spout her wild story just yet. “
Me?
That’s Angelo’s shirt you’re wearing, isn’t it? I recognize the smell of his aftershave.
And
, what are you doing up at this hour anyway?”

Cal blushed beneath her Goth makeup and brushed at her straight black bangs. “Honey, I’m too jazzed to sleep. I figured I’d come in and do a little work on the Augustine wedding cake before I crashed. Now enough about me. Spill. You’ve had a man in here. I can smell testosterone.”

“That’s creepy.” Mel pulled Cal aside, out of earshot of Arnie, who was whistling his way through the kitchen. In a moment, he’d open the fridge and find Marty gone. “I’ve got a problem.”

Calypso snickered. “How many times have I told you, I can hook you up with a guy just like that. All you have to do is—”

“The moose is toast.”

Cal’s fake eyelashes fluttered. “There’s a sentence you don’t hear every day. What do you mean? What moose?”

“Marty. The moose, you know, for the Lodge Dinner,
tonight
.”

“Oh.
Oh!
Shit. What happened?”

Mel deflated a little. “It’s a long, strange story. Will you help me make a new one?”

“Sure, but Arnie’s going to find out.”

“Will you help me keep it from Arnie? I don’t want him to freak. The Mooses…
Moose
gave him so much trouble about the design, the deadline, the flavors. If he finds out we have to start from scratch because I wrecked the cake—well, I didn’t wreck it, but it got wrecked—he’ll have a coronary.”

Calypso glanced over Mel’s shoulder at Arnie. “I owe you one anyway. I’ll do whatever you need me to do on one condition. You have to tell me absolutely everything you did last night and who you did it with.”

“You’ll never believe me, Cal.”

“Good. The more outrageous, the better. Let me make a few phone calls and see if I can arrange to get Arnie out of here early; then we can get to work.”

Mel sighed. Complete relief would come only when the Lodge took possession of a fully functioning moose cake, but with Calypso on the job, she at least had a chance of keeping hers. The day might not be a total disaster after all.

By the time the scent of coconut sponge cake wafted from the oven, Mel had begun to feel almost normal.

She stood at the stove, stirring a pot of melted sugar. The details of the previous evening spun around in her head like the gnats that had danced in the beams of Palmer’s headlights.

Demons. Witch hunters. Pixie dust.

Calypso had been staring at her for twenty minutes now, since the moment she’d gotten Arnie out of the bakery on a hunt for the perfect silver-coated nonpareils she required for the Augustine wedding cake. “Come on now. A deal’s a deal.” Cal wiped her hands on her apron and planted her fists on her hips. “How did the moose bite the dust?”

Might as well jump right in. “He was attacked by a witch hunter.”

A strange shadow crossed Calypso’s indigo eyes, and her dark red lips quirked. “Did he at least put up a good fight?”

“I’m serious, Cal. I knew you wouldn’t believe me. It was a circus here last night. I heard noises in the alley, and when I went outside, there was this…guy out there with a sword.” Best to leave the Gogmar out of it for the moment. “Then this other guy showed up on a motorcycle, and he chased me around the kitchen.”

“On a motorcycle?”

“No. He left that outside. You’re not buying any of this, are you?”

Cal turned her attention to the sheet of chocolate fondant she’d just rolled out on the coldstone at her workstation. “Hey, I’ve asked you to believe some wild things. Who am I to judge? What did this witch hunter look like, anyway?”

Mel returned to her stirring to hide the self-conscious flush that crept up her cheeks. How could she describe Blake DeWitt? A man who was both drop-dead gorgeous and utterly terrifying defied description. “He was handsome, in a rugged way. Dark hair, light brown eyes—you know, whiskey colored? And he had a bit of an accent. Maybe Scottish. He wore leather.”

Cal raised a sculptured brow. “Leather, you say? I thought your men wore flannel or they wore nothing at all.” She giggled, but there was a nervous undertone to the laugh that made Mel even more self-conscious. Did Calypso think she was lying?

“So Larry worked in construction. He might have been a jerk, but he looked damn good in a tool belt.” Mel’s marriage had taught her all too well that looks weren’t everything. DeWitt’s piercing stare and craggy voice might have caused her a tingle or two, but the fact remained he’d been ready to do to her what he’d done to Marty.

“So he hunts witches. Does that come with health bennies and a 401K these days?”

“Apparently it comes with a curse.”

Cal dropped her rolling pin. The thick wooden cylinder clattered to the floor and rolled away.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” Cal chased the pin across the floor, scooped it up and dumped it in the sink. She swept the kitchen with a suspicious look. “Mel, let’s not talk about this here. We can have the moose ready to go in two hours. Then we’ll jet, and you can tell me more about this witch hunter, okay?”

Something about her tone didn’t bode well. Mel scanned the kitchen too and then spared a quick glance at Calypso. She seemed rattled, and nothing, except Angelo, rattled Calypso.

Either way, Mel was certain now that Blake DeWitt was every bit as evil as Palmer had said, and Cal obviously knew a lot more about him than she was willing to let on.

By 1:00 p.m., Marty the Second reclined in the industrial fridge, his antlers tall and proud and his sugary teeth pristine and straight. Mel was dead on her feet.

After working the night shift at Gleason’s for more than a year, she’d gotten used to sleeping from dawn to early afternoon, so by the time she and Calypso managed to slip out and dash down Garden Street to Starbucks, she felt like a zombie.

Calypso pushed a double-tall, full-caf chocolate latte into her hands and herded her to a secluded booth at the back of the coffee shop where the comingled scents of cinnamon, peppermint and rich Colombian roast swirled around them like a grandmother’s hug.

Mel sighed into the first hot sip of her latte. If she closed her eyes now, she’d be out before the double shot of caffeine made its way into her bloodstream. The only thing keeping her awake was Calypso’s deadly serious expression.

“Tell me everything you know about the witch hunter,” she began. Her own half-caf mochaccino sat untouched between them on the freshly polished table.

“I don’t know anything, really. Palmer said his name was Blake DeWitt.”

“Palmer…Van Houten?”

“Yes, he was the guy in the alley. He had a sword, calls himself a demon hunter. Do you know him?”

“I know of him.”

Mel rummaged in her purse and pulled out Palmer’s card. Cal grabbed the little white rectangle and studied it as though it might hold the secrets of the universe. “What was a demon hunter doing in the alley behind Gleason’s?”

Somehow, staring into Cal’s dark blue eyes, the details of the early morning hours didn’t seem as farfetched. That realization only served to make Mel even more nervous. “Hunting demons?”

“What kind of demons?”

“Um…” Mel lowered her voice. “Gogmar?”

“Oh crap.” Cal finally sipped her coffee, and under the table, her three-inch boot heels made a nervous rat-tat-tat on the tile floor. “How many were there?”

“Just the one. That I…saw.” Mel whispered the word “saw”. She glanced around at the other patrons of Starbucks. No one seemed particularly interested in their conversation, though Calypso drew a few sidelong glances from several of the men. Her jet black hair, ruby lips and nosebleed heels never failed to garner a few double takes wherever she went.

She leaned in closer to Melodie. “So you saw a Gogmar.”