Wicked Business

We parked and walked over to Anarchy, and the closer we got, the creepier she looked. There was a quality to her face that whispered hysteria. Her pupils were shrunken to pinpoints. Her mouth was hard and compressed. Her manicure was perfect.

“I told you she got a manicure,” I whispered to Diesel.

We stopped a few feet from her. “Do you have the tablet?” Diesel asked.

She reached into her black leather bag and took the cracked half of the tablet out.

“Well?” Diesel asked me.

I put my fingertip to the engraved piece of marble. “Affirmative.”

“Do you have the stone?” Anarchy asked.

Diesel held the crystal in the palm of his hand for her to see.

“How do I know this is real?” Anarchy asked.

“Doesn’t it look real?” I asked her. “It’s beautiful. It has the power of the crystal. Touch it. You’ll be able to feel the heat.”

She touched the stone. “I can feel it! It’s warm.”

It was warm because it had been in Diesel’s hot hand, but no need to go into details. Anarchy gave Diesel the tablet, and he gave her the stone.

“So you’re not going to burn my house down, right?” I asked her.

“I couldn’t be bothered,” Anarchy said. “Your house is inconsequential.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s not worth your time. Just checking.”

We returned to the Aston Martin and watched the zombies step single file into a trolley.

“They’re good zombies,” Diesel said. “Orderly.”

Hatchet was gone when Diesel dropped me off at the bakery. Clara was taking refrigerator and storage cabinet inventory. Glo was tidying up the glass cases in the front shop. And I had my station to clean. I tied an apron around myself and got to work, enjoying the tedium and satisfaction of the job. Saving the world gets old pretty quick. I’d rather scrub a cake pan any day of the week. Although it was sort of fun to see Anarchy get excited about the crystal. I’d almost wished it was real.

The front door jingled, and a moment later, Glo appeared, wide-eyed and breathless.

“He’s here! In the shop!”

“Who?” Clara asked.

“Wulf,” Glo said. “He wants to talk to Lizzy.”

I dried my hands and went out front, keeping the counter between Wulf and me. I assumed he was still in a weakened condition, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant, because he didn’t look weak. He was in his usual perfectly tailored black, and he looked as powerful as ever.

“Walk with me,” he said.

I followed him outside and around the corner, where the foot traffic was nonexistent.

“I’m in your debt,” Wulf said. “I’m giving the stone back to you as partial payment.”

I took the stone and my purse from him and felt the power radiate up my arm. “I’m happy to get the stone back, but you don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe you my life. Unfortunately, your selfless act seems to have changed the stone. Whether it’s changed it completely and permanently remains to be seen. For now, it appears to have lost much of its intriguing evil properties of lustful wanting and gained the undesirable ability to make some people believe in true love.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“It’s boring and useless. And its influence has turned my minion into a worthless, slobbering romantic. He’s convinced he’s in love with your counter girl.”

“And you?” I asked. “Have you been affected by the stone?”

“It would be difficult to tell,” Wulf said. “I’ve always been a romantic. I’ve seen Casablanca twice, and I sat through the entire ordeal of Titanic.”

“Didn’t you enjoy Titanic?”

“I was relieved when the ship went down.”

Wulf had a sense of humor, sort of. Who would have thought.

“Are you going to disappear in a flash of light and a cloud of smoke?” I asked him.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” Wulf said. “My car is here. I was going to drive away. Are you disappointed?”

“A little.”

He swept his arm out, there was a flash of light and a lot of smoke, and when the smoke cleared Wulf was gone. So was his car.

That’s one heck of a parlor trick, I thought.

Glo and Clara were waiting for me when I went back into the bakery.

“What was that about?” Clara asked.

I told them about the stone and how it had changed and was no longer of any use to Wulf.

“So instead of the Lust Stone, it’s the True Love Stone,” Glo said. “That’s so cool. We should take it out tonight for a test-drive. I might be able to find the one.”

“I thought the bellringer was the one,” Clara said.

“Me, too. He had real potential, but it turned out he was married. And he wasn’t even a bellringer. He was a janitor.”

“How does the stone work?” Clara wanted to know. “Is it like a Ouija board, telling you yes, or no, or forget about it? Does it sniff out your soul mate? Does it make you fall in love?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It didn’t come with instructions.”

“We should definitely take it out,” Glo said.

“I agree,” Clara said. “It’s been sitting around for centuries, probably. It needs a night out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Diesel texted me saying he’d be home for dinner but not much before. I thought this was a nice change from having him pick me up at work and drag me off on a hunt for some enchanted relic. When I got to Marblehead, I stopped to get groceries and a bottle of wine. I let myself into my house, said hello to Cat and Carl, and took a moment to enjoy the quiet. I set the SALIGIA Stone on the kitchen counter and put the food away. By the time Diesel walked in, I had the table set and a steak ready to go on the grill.

“Where were you?” I asked him.

“I took the tablet to the office.”

“You found out where the office is located?”

“Yeah. Turns out it’s in Quincy. At least that’s where it was today.” He paused and looked at the SALIGIA Stone. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Wulf gave it back to me. He said I changed the stone when I helped him, and now it’s an icky True Love Stone.”

“He said ‘icky True Love Stone’?”

“Not in those words, but I knew what he meant. And he said he owed me, and this was partial payment for his debt.”

“I wish I’d known. I could have taken the stone with me to Quincy.”

“You can’t take it yet. I promised Glo and Clara we could take the stone out tonight to see if we could find true love.”

“Let me get this straight. You have a priceless, powerful relic that has been carefully guarded for centuries, and you’re going to take it to a bar to see if it gets you hooked up?”

“More or less.”

“That’s impressive.”

After dinner, I changed into my best jeans and a black V-necked sweater. I put on some slut makeup, slipped