flask. He then blew the fluid into the balloon, the liquid a mist coating the inside. “You never liked my sister. I tried to give you time to get to know each other, to become friends. And instead, when she met a man she liked, you took him away. How could you do that?” She had just repeated herself, word for word. The phrases were part of the spell on her.
“Evangelina is using the blood-diamond, the relic I took from the vampires, Molly. It’s powerful, made with the unwilling sacrifice of witch children. She spelled you.”
“You never liked my sister. I tried to give you two time to get to know each other, to become friends. And instead, when she met a man she liked, you took him away.” Molly was caught in a continuous loop of suggestion and I had no idea how to help her break free.
“Mol?” Evan placed one hand on her shoulder. Molly stopped. Turned. And Big Evan popped the balloon. The sound was loud in the confined space. Molly inhaled quickly, a gasp of surprise. Instantly her eyes closed and she slumped. Evan caught her as if she weighed less than Angelina. He carried her out of the kitchen back to the new master bedroom, leaving me alone.
I looked around the kitchen, at loose ends. Should I let myself out? What if that set off the wards? I didn’t cook but I checked the bread in the oven. There were six loaves, all golden brown. I found the knob that said OVEN and turned it off, then found a cloth and removed the loaves, setting them on the counter, totally out of my comfort zone. I turned off the stew.
Evan still wasn’t back, so I went to the great room and stood in the doorway watching the children. Angelina was asleep, her face scrunched up in dreams. Little Evan was holding one of his sister’s dolls, raising and lowering the arms, making little engine noises like a Transformer. They were safe. Happy. Watching them, some of the tension left me.
Angelina sucked in a breath. She sat up, her eyes wild. She screamed. “Deerdeerdeer!” I raced down the short steps and grabbed her. “Deerdeerdeerdeerdeerdeer!” she screamed over and over. I sat on the couch and rocked her, whispering sweet nothings of comfort as she screamed, the cushion warm from the heat of her sleeping body. Suddenly she was sobbing. She twined her arms around me and held on. Little Evan abandoned the doll and climbed up beside us.
“Dewerdewer,” he said, trying to imitate his sister.
“What’s wrong with the deer?” I asked her, wishing Evan would come back and help. But the doorway remained empty.
“She’s killing the deer. She’s eating them.” Angie looked up at me. “It was still alive, Aunt Jane. Its eyes were open. I saw it.”
My breath tightened in my chest, an involuntary pain. Beast ate deer. Was she seeing memories of Beast’s last kill? “Who is killing the deer, Angie Baby?”
“The frog. The big frog.”
I wiped her eyes on the afghan, trying not to laugh at the image. “It was a bad dream, Angie. Just a bad dream.”
“She’s been having it a lot,” Evan said from the doorway. “We’ve been letting her watch too much
I stroked Angie Baby’s hair, holding her trembling body. “If I hit Evangelina over the head with a baseball bat to distract her, can you break the spell?”
Big Evan almost smiled. “As happy as it would make me to see that, no. I’ve never disrupted a coven power-ring. Let me study on it a while.” Which went against my every instinct.
Evan looked at the door, and I knew I was being given the bum’s rush. Quickly I asked, “What happened to Evangelina’s family, her husband and daughter? Why did Mol say the vamps were involved?”
“They disappeared years ago. The daughter and Evangelina didn’t get along. Marvin took off and he took the girl with him. They vanished. Evangelina followed up leads for years. Never found them.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why Molly said that about her family.”
“If Molly is spelled, could Evangelina have put that in her mind?”
Evan looked worried, his mouth thinning, lips hidden by his beard. He said, “Yeah. But I’ll have to deal with that later. Come on kids,” he added. “It’s time for dinner, and Mommy’s taking a nap.” He met my eyes. “The wards are down. You know where the door is.”
“Yeah. I do.” I sat Angie on the couch and opened the door. On the night air, I smelled . . . wolf. My hackles rose, Beast’s pelt rising against my skin. “Did you and Molly adjust the wards on the house to exclude werewolves?”
“You mean the werewolves that followed you from New Orleans?” he said, his words harsh.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “those werewolves.” Once again, in Evan’s eyes, I had put Mol in danger. And I was just about to make that worse. “They’re trying to make mates and I think they’ve discovered that witches might work better than humans.”
Evan cursed foully under his breath. I walked out of the house into the night. Alone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And if the Fangheads Kill Them?
I stopped at the herb shop and parked in the shadow of a massive flowering plant. The big leaves were elongated, heart-shaped, and, this time of year, the entire small tree was covered with odd flowers, dark fuchsia, sharp-pointed petals, with dark blue centers. Molly had told me its scientific name, but all I remembered was Japanese butterfly bush. Today, the long, limber branches were trailing the ground, heavy, bent by rain. I brushed a straggling branch and it sprang back like a kids’ weapon, nature’s squirt gun, scattering water all over me. I grimaced up at the dark sky. “Thanks. I needed another drenching.”
Before I went inside, I walked around the café and shop, sniffing. A wet breeze danced in the dark, lashing my face and body with overgrown shrubs while the muddy earth sucked at my footing and roots and vines tried to trip me. Around back, a small ditch funneled rainwater down the steep hill, gurgling. Rising on the breeze, I smelled werewolf. It wasn’t fresh tang, but the wolves had been here recently. I had been too distracted to notice when I came for breakfast, or I’d have caught the scent. The dang dogs were everywhere. I had smelled them at Molly’s, now here. Maybe it was more personal than targeting witches for mates. Maybe they were deliberately targeting my friends. In the electronic age, it wouldn’t have been too hard to discover who I cared about.
I went inside, to stand on the mat just within the shop, keeping my muddy feet off the floor. Regan and Amelia, the human Everharts, were working, Regan at the cash register ringing up a final sale, Amelia mopping up muddy footprints. They acknowledged me with matching grins. When the customer left, Amelia said, “We missed you at the café. It’s good to see you, Jane.”
Regan offered me a bakery treat and the last cup of a flavored tea. I pulled off my muddy boots to keep from messing up the clean floor, and sat at a table while the girls worked around me, closing up the shop, chattering about college and term papers and Amelia’s new boyfriend. I ate and drank and nodded. When I was finished with the mega-muffin—lemon-poppy seed, bigger than a softball and Oh My Gosh delicious—I told them about the wolves, concluding with, “They’re trying to rebuild their pack and trying to make mates. And even though you’re human, you smell like witches, females who might be able to survive the wolf bite.”
The girls, who had gathered closer as I spoke, looked at one another and got this
Amelia was holding a perfectly legal 12-gauge shotgun, and Regan was holding two very different semiautomatics with matte black grips. Regan said, “The handguns are loaded, of course; this one”—she held up the H&K—“with silver nine mils for vamps, but I hear it works well on weres too. This one”—she held up the S&W—“is loaded with hollow points for humans and robbers.”
