The Sorceress Screams (4 page)

Was that the
innuendo it seemed? Or had he merely mentioned that I had mundane abilities
like running a business? I truly hoped it was the latter. Fortunately he
couldn’t see my warming cheeks.

He cleared his
throat
again,
seemingly proof it had been an innuendo.
“I’d wanted to talk about what we discussed in the car, but now isn’t a good
time.”

“Then why did
you call? Needed a daily dose of verbal bitch slapping?”

Desmond
inhaled a breath that could have been an irritated sigh or a laugh. I couldn’t
tell which without seeing his face.

“No. I called
to apologize … for not calling.” The slowed pace of his last three words might
have been indicative of embarrassment.

“It’s not like
we had a date for phone sex, Marino. Relax.” My cheeks were burning by the time
the words left my mouth.

What was I thinking?
Yes,
his behavior made me uneasy, but I wouldn’t improve the situation with quips
like that.

A lengthy
silence followed my answer. I shifted uncomfortably without really moving.

And then he
cleared his throat. “The timing on what I am going to say next is certainly
suspect now.” There was another pause, perhaps for me to comment. When I
didn’t, he said, “Will you be available to … talk tonight?”

I couldn’t
help but laugh. “Yes, I’ll be available tonight, but if another emergency comes
up, you’re S.O.L. for Saturday.”

“You have a
date.”

“Not as such,
but I do have plans.”

I winced. The
odds of no one seeing Maximo dancing with a cerulean-haired girl at a Mexican
restaurant in Sedona were slim. Desmond would hear of it.
Everyone
would hear of it.

How could I
explain the situation without damning myself?

Perhaps I’d
merely say the dinner was gratitude for his assistance. Whatever happened, it
had to be the only dinner I had with the vampire.

“Tonight
then,” Desmond said. “Good day, Ms. Walsh.”

“Good day,
Marino.”

The beep of
his Bluetooth headset disconnecting sounded in my ear. An image flashed in my
mind of him standing before the windows in his office. His hands would be
clasped behind his back, a fine suit covering his sinewy body. I dropped my
head down, banging it against the display case. And then I repeated it until a
different sort of pain replaced the image of Desmond.

****

My shop was in
the red.
Big time.
I needed a way to bring in
business.

Downstairs was
doing as well as a shop in a bad location could hope to do. No, that wasn’t
right. It was doing
better
. But the
Wipuk
side’s level of commerce was pathetic. I brainstormed
ideas for improvement because it was better than wondering what Desmond wanted
or dreading my dinner with Maximo.

Maybe I could
throw a party and invite Nell’s witch friends. If I raffled off a few rare
items as door prizes, it might get the word out that I wasn’t selling weaves.
I’d gotten along well with those girls at the solstice ball. Perhaps they knew
a few others who wouldn’t be horrible. I could do it on Monday or Tuesday when
the shop was ordinarily closed. We’d get pizza, soda (because Nell and her friends
were underage), and plenty of chocolate. Then I’d
ply
them with magical sweets.

Nell’s
attention was on the employee only entrance by the time I burst through. Her
laptop hung loose in her hands. I plunked myself in front of the display case.
And then I explained my idea.

Her eager nods
punctuated each new detail I spoke. We quickly finalized the plan. She shot off
messages to her friends with invitations for Monday night and also sent herself
a note to buy ingredients for homemade cookies.

At nine I locked
the doors feeling more optimistic than I had since the grand opening. This
would work. It had to. I wouldn’t make it past a few months if I didn’t start
selling some of the bigger ticket items in stock. Those were on the
Wipuk
side of the line. That meant breaking through the
blockade the witches had on me.

Nell waved
from her Mazda with her phone to her ear as I started for my Nissan. She spoke
of the party on Monday in a lively voice to whoever was on the other end. This
would
work.

The drive home
was comfortably uneventful. I spotted my
werefox
neighbor at the mailboxes in the apartment complex. Keith
Tykal
was a single father of a fifteen-year-old fellow
werefox
.
He was a nice guy, but I rarely saw him. Either he hid in his apartment, or he
had a job that kept him busy. Keith stammered a greeting as I checked for mail,
and then hurried away before I could do more than wave at him.

The mailbox
had no love for me tonight, containing only bills and the beginnings of junk
mail. My lips lifted into a quirky smile. Becoming the recipient of junk mail
was like validation. I was now officially mortal.

I pushed
through the door into my darkened apartment. The granite breakfast bar that cut
the open-plan living room off from the kitchen served as the holder for all my
junk mail. I scanned the place for anything glowing.
Nothing
.

Had I
remembered to pull on the wristband my mother had given me to detect anything
brought over from the Divine Realm? I pulled back my sleeve. The leather band
stamped with a wave design was snug around my wrist.

Trip hasn’t been here
.

I headed off
into the bedroom where I tossed off my jean shorts, fishnets, and T-shirt in
exchange for my orange tank top. With a glass of ice water in hand, I settled
onto the navy futon in the living room. I propped my laptop on my chest and
dangled my leg over the edge onto the cool travertine floor.

The phone rang
moments after I’d checked my e-mail and scheduled two bills to be paid. Quarter
to ten. Desmond was calling.

He’d given me
precisely forty-five minutes to get home, settle in, and relax before he’d
called. Sometimes he did un-dick-like things that violated the Desmond the dick
persona I’d fashioned for him in my head.

His seeming
thoughtfulness made me answer the phone with full-on-
snark
.
“What are you wearing?”

There wasn’t
an immediate answer from him. “This is Desmond Marino?” His pitch noticeably
lifted on his surname.

I, of course,
homed in on that. “You sound unsure about that. Are you or are you not Desmond
the dick?”

“That is up
for debate.” Moving us onto a productive topic, he asked, “Are you where you
can talk?”

“Yeah.
I’m home. I’m alone.
How ‘bout you, Marino?”

“I wouldn’t
have called if I couldn’t talk,” he said a little stiffly.

I pictured him
on his sofa in the modern living room with its flagstone floors, stacked stone
walls, and the waterfall gently tinkling in the background. In my mind he had
on a dress shirt that had been partially unbuttoned, and the sleeves had been
rolled up to his elbows. Oh, and he had a glass of wine close at hand.

Miffed with
the level of detail in my imagination, I went into instigator mode. “Not even
to apologize for not calling?”

“You’re
irritated I called to apologize?” Desmond made a small contemplative sound. “I
thought women lived for an apologetic male.”

“Women live
for a male who can admit he’s wrong. Apologetic isn’t a terribly difficult
trick for your gender.”

He inhaled a
soft breath—definitely a laugh. “I’m sure you’re as busy as I am, so I’ll get
right to the point of my call. We discussed something in the car on the way
back to Sedona on Monday. Nothing was decided because of your emergency.”

I cut through
his diplomatic verbiage. “You want me to be your mole.”

Desmond’s puff
of air was irritated this time. “We both have
Wipuk’s
best interests in mind.”

That’s what he
wanted me to think, but I was pretty sure Desmond had Desmond’s best interests
in mind. I kept quiet rather than argue.

“Given the
recent leadership change in the coalition, I need to know if de Sole had
anything to do with
Dea
Woods being enthralled. I
think you can help find out.”

“But the
question is do I want to?”

“If you truly
have
Wipuk’s
best interest in mind, you do.”

I couldn’t
argue with his taunting response. The colony wasn’t my concern. I cared about
the covens at large. But I’d have to give up at least one closely held secret
to explain that.

I let puffed a
martyred breath much like he would have. “What do you want me to do, oh swami
swan?”

Desmond
sighed. “Set up a meeting with him. And then use Water to manipulate him into
telling you if he had anything to do with
Dea’s
enthrallment. A visiting vampire is flouting our agreements, and I need to know
if he’s working autonomously.”

“It doesn’t
work on Maximo. I don’t know enough about vampires to know if that’s normal or
not, but it didn’t work for me.”

“When have you
tried to manipulate de Sole?”

“Last night.”

“You were with
him last night?”

I didn’t like
the implied accusation in that frosty voice of his. Desmond hadn’t said when he
would call yesterday, and he’d blown me off for the emergency anyway. He didn’t
have any right to be miffed.

“No, he came
to the shop to check up on me.
Just like you did.”

“Then why did
you manipulate him?” The question had been voiced in his original neutral
tone—frost and accusation missing.

“He had
something of mine I wanted back.”

“And it didn’t
work?”

“No. It bombed
big
time. But it didn’t seem like
he’d noted the empathic link.”

“I’ve been
able to manipulate vampires. But I wasn’t sure if they noticed it or not, so
I’ve never tried it on de Sole.”

“Oh, I see,” I
said in my best sardonic tone. “Send in the sorceress to do what you’re too
chicken shit to do.”

“He wouldn’t
hesitate to attack me. You, on the other hand…”

I waited for
him to finish his statement. He never did. “Me on the other hand what?”

“He bid on
your date at the charity auction. He claimed you as part of his faction despite
your attack on
Ascencion
. And he threatened me with
vivisection if I ever accused you of a crime again. Obviously de Sole is
willing to tolerate more from you than he would anyone else.”

Uneasy with my inability to refute that, I reacted with
snark
.
“He probably just
wants me to be his mole, too.”

“You’re on the
fringe, and he knows that. You’re of no use to him until you infiltrate our
ranks, but that will never happen because you aren’t one of us. I think what he
wants from you is personal.”

His declaring
I’d never infiltrate their ranks
rankled
me.
Infiltration was precisely why I’d been sent to
Wipuk
.
But the final declaration worried me more. What if he was right about Maximo?

“I tried to
manipulate him, Marino. It failed. I can’t make him tell me anything, so
there’s no point in trying.”

“You failed
with Water. Women have any number of manipulative tools that don’t require
magic.”

I shot into a
seated position, upending the laptop onto the futon with a noisy thud that
probably wasn’t healthy for the device. “I can’t believe you. No, that’s not
right. I
can
. You’re Desmond the dick,
and this is just another dick move of yours.”

The Water
witch retorted in a stiff, condescending tone. “We all have to do distasteful
things occasionally to further our ends.”

“What
distasteful thing have you done lately, Marino?” I made an angry noise. “Let me
guess, it involved cooking dinner for a certain frustrating sorceress.”

“It involved
cooking dinner for a certain frustrating society matron with grabby hands.” The
words were stilted and hollow as though he’d spoken them from between clenched
teeth.

Did he mean
the woman who had won
his
date at the
solstice ball auction?

Still, he
hadn’t said cooking dinner for me had been pleasant. He’d only said the
latest
unpleasant thing he’d done was
with the society matron. For all I knew, he could have cooked for her on
Tuesday after our Monday date.

I heaved
another martyred breath. “I’m going to dinner with him tomorrow night. I’ll
find out what I can, but I’m not sleeping with the guy to do it.”

“You already
had a date set up?”

The icy
question had me quickly replying. “It’s not a date. He has something of mine,
and he won’t give it back unless I have dinner with him.”