The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) (9 page)

Dan was lying to me and I knew it. He knew I knew it, too, because he didn’t say anything. He just got that watchful look in his eyes that made him be all Ranger-y, like I was some sort of enemy.
 

If that’s the way he wanted it, fine.
 

I no longer cared. Okay, maybe I cared a little, but I was doing everything I could to tamp out those burning embers.
 

I wanted to find out what he was, but first I had to find out what I was. It wasn't enough to live day by day with this big cloud hanging over my head. I had to know the truth, rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, for better or worse.

Nor was I going to sit back and let somebody decide when it was time for me to know, like my grandmother finally revealing that ever since I was born I was a changeling. I was a little tired of being passive in my own life. I was going to be active from this moment on.

I drove out of the gates of the castle with Charlie riding shotgun, nose into the wind. I’d opened the passenger side window half way.
 

"Don't drool on the glass," I said.

He grinned happily at me, then resumed his pose half in and half out of the window.

I wasn't sure Charlie was simply a dog. Of course, my paranoia might be put down to the experiences of the last month or so. I wasn't quite a vampire. Niccolo Maddock wasn't just a vampire, either. I knew Dan wasn't just a former Ranger. I knew my grandmother wasn't just Nonnie.
 

Nobody was just simply a human being anymore. No, they were one of the Brethren or they were a vampire, or they were something I’d never heard of before, like a Dirugu. So it was to be expected that I was a little suspicious of everything and everyone that crossed my path, including my canine companion.

"If you are more than a dog," I said to Charlie, "now's the time to let me know. Feel free to shift into what you are.”
 

I glanced at him. All I got was a few pants in response.

"No, seriously, what are you? Shape shifter? Werewolf? Werewolf hybrid? Witch hybrid? Elf? Something I’ve never heard of?"

Pant, pant.

He didn’t shift. He only slobbered against the glass.
 

"Okay, then."

We got to San Antonio in record time, which wasn't a surprise, since it was between the morning and lunch rush hours. When I entered Alamo Heights, I made sure I was two or three miles below the speed limit of thirty five.

Alamo Heights didn't have a large police department, but the one they did was devoted to monitoring the speed traps.

Alamo Heights was our answer to 90210. An incorporated city within the geographic confines of San Antonio, Alamo Heights was about as preppy and overpriced as you could get. A two bedroom cottage with warped floorboards and a sagging roof could go for a quarter of a million dollars, easily.
 

Yet for all of its pretentiousness, Alamo Heights had a certain small town ambience. People really did know each other and were cliquish in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I’d always been odd man out in high school, one of the last ones picked to join a team or the girl in the back of the room at any function. School was for learning, not trying to adjust socially. That's a lesson I learned from my grandmother. I should have been a little more like my mother who, even to this day, was a social butterfly. She was probably charming all the fanatics at The Militia of God.
 

There are only a few main streets in Alamo Heights, Broadway being one of them. Hermonious Brown’s bookstore, cutely named Ye Olde Bookshoppe, was located on Broadway. I parked around the side of the building, looked at Charlie, and realized that I’d probably made a mistake in bringing him.

Well, Mr. Brown was simply just going to have to accept the presence of a dog.

To the best of my knowledge, Charlie didn't chase cats, but to be on the safe side, we had a heart to heart talk in the car.

"There's a cat in there," I said. "Her name is Angelica and she's very, very old. You won't bother her, right?"

Charlie drooled a little on my hand, then whined in agreement.

I wiped off my palm with a tissue I had in my purse.
 

Before I left the car, I turned off my phone, remembering the last time it had rung when I was meeting with Mr. Brown. He’d refused to talk to me for a good ten minutes, until I was feeling dutifully chastised for my rudeness.
 

Mr. Brown was a Luddite and proud of it. He didn’t advertise on the web. He didn’t have a website or email, which had made communicating with him during his settlement a pain.
 

As an insurance adjuster, I’d handled one of Mr. Brown’s claims. A sign had blown off a shop on the opposite side of the street and careened into his storefront, shattering his large glass window. My investigation had concluded that it was one of those errant windstorms we get occasionally in San Antonio. Out of a clear blue sky, the wind can gust up to forty miles an hour.

Mr. Brown was a curmudgeonly sort, completely antisocial and annoyed by all the bureaucracy I’d brought with me. Still, something about him reminded me of my late grandfather, a man as kind as my mother was cold.
 

Had my grandfather known what I was? He died when I was seven and I felt his loss keenly for years.
 

Now I wondered if he’d been a witch, too. Or a warlock. Was that a male witch? Funny, I’d rarely read of witches in any of my fiction. Had that been because of something Nonnie had done?
 

I had too many damned questions.
 

After clipping on Charlie’s leash, which I was using only because San Antonio and Alamo Heights had a leash law, I opened the car door and together we went in search of knowledge.
 

I took the three concrete steps up to the wooden boardwalk in front of the store. The place look like a storefront in Fredericksburg, Texas, something that dated back to frontier days. I knew from my earlier research that the building was only from the thirties, but Mr. Brown didn’t do anything to make it smell, look, or feel more modern. The last time I was here, he’d repaired the window, but I knew he didn’t intend to do anything about the sagging floors or the stacks and stacks of books.
 

I opened the door, hearing the little bell on the top ring as I breathed in the scent of wood, mildew, kitty litter, and old books.

Mr. Brown never came to the front to welcome a browser or buyer. Instead, he sat behind his counter in a space I think of as his safe zone. The area was created by a massive circular counter. Once it had stood in the middle of the shop, but after the incident with the sign, he had moved the counter back until one end touched the far wall.
 

Not that anyone could tell there was a counter there. Every available surface was covered with books. Stacks and stacks of books ranging in size and age and date. The only way they were organized in any kind of order was by subject. Mr. Brown didn't believe in books that were written in the last twenty or thirty years. Instead, he concentrated on older books, some of them valuable enough to belong to a museum.
 

One of his most precious volumes was illuminated by a monk in the 14th century. He'd taken it out of his safe and showed it to me, only after I’d agreed not to breathe on it. Of course I wasn't allowed to touch it and when he did so, it was with a pair of white gloves set aside for that purpose.

Mr. Brown would know if there was a book featuring paranormal creatures, like a Dirugu.
 

I stood there for a minute, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Another thing Mr. Brown didn't like: natural light. Nor was he fond of florescent fixtures. Only one old fashioned banker’s light with a green shade sat at the end of the counter and it was here that he sat huddled over a book.
 

I don’t think he liked buyers coming in his store. Someone had told me that he was independently wealthy, that he maintained the store to keep his relatives from bothering him. I don’t know if it was true or not. Mr. Brown wasn’t the type to divulge details about himself.
 

Charlie, thankfully, sat silent at my side, even as Angelica tiptoed over the books on the counter. Her white fur had grown yellowish and she was as thin as Mr. Brown.

I hadn't seen the man for two years, but he hadn't changed. He was still tall, but he never stood up straight and even sitting on his stool, he hunched up his shoulders and drew himself in as if to make himself smaller. His face was long, well lined, pulled down by gravity and his own despairing way of looking at the world.
 

“I’ve read too much philosophy,” he told me once. “I’ve seen too much of what the world can do to itself. I've not much positive thought for the human race.”

How did he feel about vampires?

His hair was thinning, the blonde strands revealing a delicately pink pate. He looked up and saw me, the gesture making his thick glasses with their black frames slide down to the end of his nose. He looked like an ancient Buddy Holly.

"Miss Montgomery, what a surprise."
 

For a thin man, he had a deep, booming voice. I’d once commented that he sounded like a radio announcer. He’d only stared at me balefully, a warning not to make a personal remark again.
 

Now he put down the book he was reading and slid from his stool, approaching the counter.

I was pleased that he remembered my name and also that he’d glanced at Charlie but said nothing about my bringing an animal into his establishment.

"I need your help, Mr. Brown," I said. “I’m looking for a book on the paranormal.”
 

I’d decided, in those seconds I was waiting for him to notice me, to tell him the truth. It might be the wrong thing to do, given my suspicion of everyone and everything, but I also suspected that it would be the fastest way to learn what I needed to know.
 

Who said I wasn’t still Pollyanna?
 

“The paranormal, Miss Montgomery?”
 

I nodded. “I’m looking for any mention of a creature that’s a combination of a vampire and a witch. It’s called a Dirugu. It’s supposed to be a special kind of vampire.”
 

He didn’t say anything for a moment.
 

“I try not to keep books on the paranormal, Miss Montgomery. I find that exactly the wrong people are searching for them. I don’t want to anger any of those groups.”
 

I noticed that he didn’t actually come out and say he didn’t have any.

“What groups?”
 

“A great variety, Miss Montgomery. People who would harangue me all day, who would watch my store. I don’t carry books on the paranormal because I don’t want to be involved in their politics. Or be accused of being partial to one group versus another. You do not know how annoying the Other can be.”
 

Who the hell were the Other? Was that another name for Brethren?
 

“I would be very grateful for any help, Mr. Brown. I haven’t been able to find anything on Google or anywhere on the Internet.”
 

His nose wrinkled, which wasn’t an unexpected reaction.
 

“I wouldn’t tell anyone where I got the books, Mr. Brown.”

Just in case he had some after all.
 

An elderly acquaintance of mine, who used to own a used book store, told me about the box of books she’d always kept under the front counter. They were what would probably pass for erotica today or even plain old porn. When a long-time female customer came in and asked to see “the box”, they brought out about ten of the dog eared volumes at a time, tucked them away in a paper bag, and no one ever mentioned the whispered exchange.
 

Nowadays, we loaded whatever we wanted to read on our Kindles and off we went, no one the wiser.
 

In the spirit of those adventurous women of old, I was getting up the nerve to tell Mr. Brown that I’d become a vampire, if not exactly how.
 

I didn’t get the chance because the world ended.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Did the earth move for you, too?
 

The blast upended my world, narrowing it to inches around my head. I was on the floor, the ceiling falling around me. A wet nose was at my chin and the weight of a retriever on top of me.
 

Charlie whined, then licked my face. I winced, moving away from his fish smelling tongue. What were they feeding him at the castle? I tried to roll to the side but Charlie buried his nose against my neck, just as an ancient light fixture fell, missing me by inches.
 

Holy crap!

Charlie jumped off me as I struggled to sit up, brushing the plaster off both of us. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my cheek against the top of his head. I knew he probably wanted a Milk Bone biscuit, but all I had right now was a gratitude hug.