A Wolf at the Door

that didn’t belong, I guess.

Tai knelt next to me, tilting his head curiously as he wiggled his finger through the barrier. “It’s not as strong as yesterday, right?”

“Right.”

“Is the circuit broken anywhere?” He was still thinking of it as an electrical device, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. If there was an opening in the circle anywhere, it would cease to function. I checked the entire length of string again, and found it all intact. “Maybe your power source is dying? Like, it needs fresh batteries?”

That made something cold settle in my stomach. If Cam’s power was flagging this soon, these things were going to be worthless before day’s end. And I had no way to renew them. “Maybe…I wonder if…”

“Dear God, what is that stench?” Gretchen’s voice startled me out of my thinkings, and we turned to find her planted in the middle of the living room, her pert nose wrinkled in disgust. “Which one of you didn’t shower?” There was a general chorus of “not me’s” from the menfolk, and Gretchen looked at us like we were crazy. “Seriously? None of you smell that?”

Bobby, standing near the dining table, frowned faintly. “Now that you mention it…what is that?” His nose wrinkled as he sniffed the air. “Smells like…like stale sweat. Only worse. Like…an entire football team of stale sweat.”

I tested the air myself, dreading that I would find the telltale scent of sulfur. But no, I caught nothing but the subtle fragrance of Gretchen’s perfume. “Where do you smell it?”

“This way.” After a few moments of wandering, Bobby found himself facing the flower bouquet. “Here. It’s something in here, I think.”

Now, what I know about plants could fit on the head of a pin. That’s my wife’s department. But once I got close enough to the assorted flowers and caught the distinctive aroma, I knew exactly what it was, and why it was there.

“Shit.” A little digging into the bouquet revealed a double handful of small leaves, fuzzy-ish, already turning black where the edges had dried. It had been tucked in among the flowers like decorative greenery. “Black horehound.”

“Black whore what?” Dante gave me an accusing look.

“Black horehound,” I enunciated carefully, holding the leaves up for display. “It’s a member of the mint family, but it reeks to high heaven, so no one uses it for much.” The only reason I recognized it was because Mira had received some of this instead of the less offensive white horehound in some supplies for her shop a few summers ago. The smell was…memorable.

Gretchen came closer to examine the offending foliage. “Why would someone put it in a bouquet?”

“They wouldn’t.” But I knew exactly why it was there. “Black horehound has some medicinal values. I forget what all right now. But it also has the unique ability to absorb magical energies.” Soaked it right up like a sponge, if I remembered Mira’s lecture correctly. Which explained a whole lot about the wards on the door. “Someone thinks they’re gonna need to get in here. They’re trying to disable my wards.”

You know, up until this point, I’d been tempted to pack it all in and go home. I’d seen no signs of danger that Tai or Bobby couldn’t handle, no overt attacks, no hints of anything nefarious. Until now.

And of course, there was no card. That would have been too easy. Why, just once, couldn’t the bad guy just walk up and introduce himself? “Hi, I’m Frank. I’ll be your nemesis this evening.”

“Well, throw it out!” Gretchen snatched up the heavy glass vase and marched toward the door.

“No!” I caught up to her in two strides and carefully removed it from her grasp. “No, if you take it out the door again, it’s just going to weaken the ward more.”

“Well, we can’t have it in here stinking up the place,” she pointed out.

“Chuck it off the balcony?” Tai suggested, but Bobby nixed the idea. “We’re nine stories up. If that hits someone on the ground, it’ll kill them.”

“Can we just pick out all the smelly leaves?” Dante peered at the pile I’d left on the bar, but was careful not to touch.

“I can’t be sure we’d get them all. Or what else someone has put in this thing.” It didn’t feel like any magic, but was that because the horehound was masking it? I rubbed my fingertips together, wondering what effect just handling the leaves would have on Mira’s protective spells.

They were all looking at me, waiting to see what they should do. I hate that.

“Okay. Okay, let’s do this. Bobby, get this thing out of here. Just take it out and dump it in the trash somewhere downstairs. It’s going to weaken the wards on the door some more, but I’ll take the one off my room and add it to this one, after the plant is gone.” Sure, that’d leave me without a secure room to fall back to, but I was here to protect Gretchen first and foremost. I’d just have to make do.

After a moment of silence, Bobby nodded. “You heard the man.” He took the flowers from me and went to dispose of them.

“See if you can find out who delivered those, Bobby,” I called after him.

As I’d feared, the ward was noticeably depleted by the second pass of the bouquet through its barrier. It barely registered to my senses as I crossed the threshold to go to my own room.

It took only a moment to tear down the blessed string around my own doorjamb and replace it around Gretchen’s waning ward. Thankfully, that snapped the protection back to full force. Dante stood beside me in the hallway as I worked, just watching in silence, and Tai stood on the inside of the door, nodding his approval as he tested the feel of it. “Yeah, that’s better. Like when you first set them up.”

“It’ll do for now.” But I was going to need a backup plan. I could see that already. Man, I hoped I could think of one before I needed it.

Gretchen also watched the proceedings, her brow furrowed as she pondered all the implications of this interesting development. “So, is it still safe for me to go out? I mean, the spa thing and this meeting at the movie