I patted Itty Bitty’s hand again. “Like I said. The Party of African Weres will pick up any outstanding medical bills. The leader assured me personally.”
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
I managed a smile, but from the reaction on her face, not a good one. “Yeah. I did.” Okay. Enough social-small-talk. I waggled my fingers at them and left the room, fighting the urge to run. I’d rather face a pack of wolves than try to comfort someone.
Rick lounged against a wall in the hallway, his legs crossed at the ankles, looking long and lean in black jeans and jacket, and not trying very hard to discourage the two young women who were hanging around. They were dressed in brightly patterned scrub suits and one had a chest that Rick clearly found imposing. Maybe mesmerizing was a better word. “Come on, Ricky Bo,” I said, “before your eyeballs fall out.”
He grinned at me, his too-long hair falling forward, curling into his collar. “Sandra is Sam Orson’s nurse.” He nodded to the busty one. “She says the deputy’s going to be fine. He just took a ricochet off the magical ward into the meaty part of his thigh.” I hadn’t realized I carried the weight of the cop’s injury until it fell away. “You can quit worrying,” he added more gently.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and shrugged, not knowing how to respond.
Rick pushed off the wall and draped his arm around my shoulders, not an easy thing to do when there’s no disparity in height. “Come on. We need to talk.”
Oh crap. We need to talk as in, I bought a house and want you to move in? Or as in, I want to see other people, like the busty Sandra? Or as in—
“I had a call from Grizzard. And from PsyLed. I’ve got job offers from both.”
I thought about that as we entered the elevator and Rick pushed the button for the lobby. As the doors closed, I asked, “They know about you?”
“Yeah. They do. I told them. I’d be a detective with the sheriff’s department, with full moons off so I can listen to the spell music Evan made for me. The job PsyLed outlined is a kind of roving special agent with a territory covering seven Southeastern states.” When I didn’t reply he said, “I’m thinking about taking the PsyLed offer.”
The elevator doors opened and we walked out of the hospital into the fall sunlight. It was Indian Summer, temps in the high eighties and days long enough to pretend that winter and snow and ice would never come. But cold always follows heat, as night follows day, and sadness follows joy. Fang and Rick’s red crotch-rocket were parked close by the door, taking up one space. “You’re a good cop,” I said. “It had to help when you told the sheriff about the body in Evangelina’s house.” I had told him about the body after the battle with Evangelina, Shaddock, the angel, and the demon.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, agreeing. “I’m a hero.”
I play-socked his bicep and he play-screamed and ducked as if injured. “Any word on what killed her husband?” I asked, grinning.
“Blunt object head trauma. Maybe a frying pan.” At my look he said, “What? She’s a chef. Anyway, ten years or so ago Evangelina whacked him on the head, rolled him in a carpet, and hid him behind the couch. She told her sisters he left her. Her daughter disappeared at the same time.”
I straddled Fang and helmeted up. “The twins are ready to deliver us and the steer to the grindy. You up for a helicopter ride?”
Rick waggled his eyebrows at me. “Baby, I’m always up.”
I rolled my eyes and keyed on Fang. Together we roared out of the hospital parking lot.
I was pushing Beast, like baiting a lion in her den, but so far, nothing had drawn her out. Beast was silent even as I strapped in to the helo and the engine’s whine rose in pitch. I hated the flimsy contraptions, but I had things to do in a limited amount of time and the helicopter would make it all possible. Brandon—or maybe it was Brian, it was hard to tell with the com-gear on—gave me a thumbs-up and the bird lifted off. Rick was having a ball, the two men up front, talking back and forth on the com-channel. I was sitting in back, beside the shrink-wrapped steer carcass that smelled of old cold blood and maybe brine, and had my com-gear turned off, wearing it only to mute the noise.
I stared out over the city of Asheville as the bird rose and careened toward the hills. Everything looked closer together up here, the folds of the earth that made travel so time-consuming becoming inconsequential. I could get used to this. I could. If I was going to remain in Leo Pellissier’s employ.
I had stuff to do. Decisions to make. Places to be. And still so many things unfinished, hanging over me like Death’s sickle. A sense of dislocation hammered at me. I literally had no home now. No one to call family. Molly had talked to me once on the phone, but she was grieving for her sister, and her sister’s killer was difficult to be around, especially with the funeral in the works, law enforcement combing through Evangelina’s home, and so much media attention focused on the Everharts and the Truebloods. All because of me.
The fact that Evangelina was a murderer and a blood-witch, spelling her coven, and keeping horrible secrets that would have come to a dangerous and deadly climax with or without me didn’t make Molly’s grief any less real or any less intense. Grief isn’t logical. I understood, but it hurt. Life hurt. Angie Baby and I talked on the phone every day, often about her angel, but I hadn’t been allowed to see her. Big Evan had asked me, politely, to stay away.
My belongings were packed in the back of an SUV here in Asheville and in my freebie house in Louisiana. But I had no place to send them. And . . . Beast was still silent. Even with me in a helo again, the rotor noise like an animal’s roar.
The twins had reconnoitered the GPS location we were going to and found a landing site in a field nearby, but we flew over the cleft in the hills first. It looked different from the sky, flatter, muddier. The dammed up pond was gone, the logs and debris scattered downstream. But I got a glimpse of the cave, and the pile of bones, crows and buzzards on the limbs of trees in far greater numbers than before. At the helo’s noisy approach, the birds scattered, flying low. The B-twin hovered over the site and Rick unstrapped, joining me in the back. Together, we slid open the helo door and braced ourselves against the sides. Rick held up three fingers, lips saying, “On three.” His head jerked down three times, counting, and on three, we pushed. The steer carcass slid across the helo in its plastic wrap and tumbled out. The helo wobbled with the weight distribution and updrafts, before it stabilized and we stuck our heads out the open door.
I felt, more than saw, Rick laugh when the carcass hit the ground and bounced, right in front of the grindy’s lair. Rick pulled me back, shutting the door as the helo banked and soared away, to the clearing we intended to use as a landing site. After that it was a strenuous hike back, requiring a lot of sweat, some blood from scraped knuckles, a ton of mud, and way longer than a helo. The value of speed wasn’t lost on me. But Beast didn’t comment.
We stood between the pile of bones and the cave mouth, the reek of death suffocating in the heat of the September day. I had smelled some bad things in my time, but the charnel-house/abattoir stench was beyond awful. The bear was foul, slimy, maggoty, even though the bones had been stripped of most of the flesh. Gack, eww, ick.