Kicking It (12 page)

Amari put the protection spell on me before I walked down the road, just to set a bit of distance between her cabin and what I knew would be tracking me down before too long.

In addition to Amari’s knife, I had taken Philippe’s revolver with me as insurance. Since I had tested my powers out only tonight, a firearm felt right in my hands. I had the feeling I was capable of much more than wrestling a strong man into submission or putting that red-eyed attacker back on its heels, but this was no time to get cocky.

After I settled into a crouch on the side of the moon-washed road, my back to one of the trees that clawed over me with branches and Spanish moss, I wasn’t certain how long I waited. But it was a while, because the sky was paling now, and my boots were tapping at me, as if counting down to the time when they would take over, shutting my body down so they could take their nourishment from me.

Yet I had told Amari that I wouldn’t be returning until my hunter had come to me or I needed a bed to slump in.

As I waited, I tried to think of the reasons I might have had for leaving Amari’s cabin and striking out for the city the previous nights. Had one of my unfiltered memories come back to me, prompting me to pursue my family before they reached me? Had I remembered that they would come to wherever I was and I wanted to get to them first, before I forgot again?

Any way about it, the boots had a price, and I would gladly pay it, not only because of the burns that returned whenever I removed the boots, but because I feared I would be a nearly mindless revenant again, just as I had been before Amari had saved me . . .

As the bayou sounds halted for a moment, chills rolled over me. My boots clutched at my legs, and I kept to my crouch, surveying the road, looking to the darkness beyond the trees to see if my attacker was near.

I should have known how this hunter operated, though, and when I slowly looked above me to the bole of the oak I was leaning against, I saw those red night-vision eyes against a black mask.

It had slid down the trunk to get to me, and it was aiming a Taser again.

Before I could think about what sort of balance and stealth
that
had taken, my body blipped into action: I raised the revolver, shooting to kill. But the hunter was faster. The thing dodged the bullet, yet not all the way—it clipped the Taser, sending the stunner flying once more.

When the hunter used a hand to clamp onto my arm and then flipped me to my back, the breath blasted out of my lungs, my sight scrambling. All I knew was that I’d let go of the revolver, and I had only the long knife that Amari had given to me.

I went for my side, where the blade was hanging in a sheath from my belt loop, but again, the hunter anticipated me, stepping on my arm.

It spoke in an electronically altered voice. “Don’t fight, Lilly. The Meratoliages have been searching for you quite a long time. Just come along.”

An accent like mine. “Are you one of the family?”

A tight laugh. “There are more of us all the time. We’ve had to activate candidates we would have never considered before you brought the family to its knees.” It paused. “All we want, Lilly, is to have you with us again.”

“So you can put me to death.” I remembered the bonfire, the flames licking at me, the eyes of my family leader as she watched.

“No,” the hunter said. “If that was what we had in store for you, I would not have brought Tasers.”

I was still dwelling on the “in store for you” portion. Perhaps fighting wasn’t my best option at the moment. “If I went with you, what would happen?”

The hunter shook its head, as if it were telling me that it wouldn’t divulge that information. And as if it pitied me as well.

The pity rankled, and my boots dug into my flesh. A memory stirred, restless, wanting to bloom.

Were the boots trying to help me access a helpful memory? Were they giving up a bit of themselves for me?

I grasped part of the memory.
A videotape I had found as a young girl. Meratoliages, gathered round a table, where a dead member of my family lay, his chest open as they prodded and poked . . .

The truth struck me—my family wished to see if I had deformities? They had given up on me and wanted to learn from my mistakes, so that they would never be repeated in another member as they pursued their dark arts and tried to raise the dragon to life again.

But I wanted to
live
, even if it was merely night by night.

I called upon my muscle memory to save me, swinging my body so that I somehow got one of my legs over one of the hunter’s, my other leg between its legs. Then I scissored, bringing the thing down with an electronic grunt of surprise.

It didn’t take long for it to hop to a crouch, yet I was already in one, my knife in hand.

Unfortunately, it had accessed nunchakus, and as it spun them and swung them over one shoulder and grasped the bottom handle in preparation to knock me out, I braced myself to duck—

A shot rang out, and the next thing I knew, blood slapped my chest and face, and one of the attacker’s arms was missing.

I dove to the ground as the hunter’s electric scream overrode all the night sounds. When I looked up again, it was writhing on the ground, clutching what was left of its arm.

I looked over to see Philippe with a shotgun still aimed at the hunter.

Amari,
I thought.
Was she okay?

He stalked forward, slowly and methodically, talking to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. What did you do to Amari?”

“Only borrowed this baby from her. Maybe tied her up and gagged her, too, so she can’t make any spells that might’ve stopped me. But she’s fine. Me, too. Thanks for asking.”

The hunter was groaning, and I was shocked to see that it was still trying to grasp for the nunchakus it had dropped on the ground.

Automatically, I flung my knife at it, and the blade stuck into its neck. Dead shot.

It stopped all movement, but next thing I knew, Philippe had put the shotgun on me. I smiled at him, hardly surprised. Money was money.

“How did you—?” I started.

“Wake up and grab her shotgun without her seeing?
Cher
, I played possum for as long as I could. I waited and waited until after Amari rolled me to the side of the floor and then went about fixing some dinner. Or maybe the witch knew I was destined to get away and she didn’t bother to fight fate.”

But there was another option—what if Philippe was part of my protection spell and that was the reason Amari hadn’t stopped him?

“What are you destined to do now?” I asked him. “Take me with you so you can collect the reward money from the Meratoliages?”

He didn’t say anything. I realized at that moment that Philippe Angier needed the money for his family, but he wasn’t a true-born mercenary.

“If you bring me to them,” I said, “they’re going to kill me. They’re going to tear me apart to see why I didn’t work.”

“That money could help my
maman
for the rest of her life.”

“I understand.” I saw the revolver not three feet from me.

“You don’t understand, Lilly. You—”

Just as I was about to spring for the revolver, his shotgun went off again. But he hadn’t aimed at me.

When I looked behind me, I saw the hunter sprawled on its back, a hole in its chest.
We Meratoliages don’t stop,
I thought, but Philippe had certainly put a halt to this one.

Just to make certain of that, I stood, went to it, and peeled off its night-vision goggles and its mask. A fall of sandy hair, just like mine, spilled to the ground. She even looked a bit like me.

I dug under her black turtleneck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I turned to him. “I suppose I should thank you, but I suspect you were only clearing the way to the money for yourself. You saw in your vision where the Meratoliages are?”

“Yes. And I would’ve taken you to them right away, except I thought those boots were giving you more powers than a human should have. But it wasn’t the boots at all.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t.”

Even though he had the shotgun trained on me now, I wasn’t about to go with him. I threw caution to the winds and called on my muscle memory to get me through this.

I made a low run at him, as if I were going to tackle his legs, but instead I sprang, jarring the shotgun up. He didn’t fire it as the weapon flew out of his grip, and as I spun and kicked up, my boot thudded against his head. He crashed to the ground. I pinned him as I’d done before.

All he did was smile, yet it was a sad one. “The Meratoliages won’t stop. There’ll always be someone coming after you.”

I could see his face more clearly, now that dawn was threatening. Beautiful gray eyes and a mouth that looked . . .

I don’t know the reason I did it—I wondered whether I often gave in to impulse—but I bent down, pressing my lips to his. Warm, soft. My boots seemed to twine round themselves even more, as if hugging themselves. I felt the same sensation in my belly until I pulled away.

We locked gazes, and in that endless second, I knew that he was too good to trade me in for money.

“You walk away,” I said. “Hitch a ride to the main road. If you stay away from me, you might even get your bike back someday.”

“I’d better.” His voice was a whisper, as if he’d been affected by the kiss. But when he assumed that arrogant smile, I knew he would never say it aloud. “You’re a real survivor, Lilly.”

“You remember that.”

I wasted no time before pushing myself off him and grabbing the shotgun, plus the revolver. I even went to pull my knife out of the Meratoliage, thinking that I would ask Amari’s student to quickly come here and fetch the body before the animals got to it so the witch could put a stay-dead-forever spell on it, just in case. I didn’t think I had the time to drag it back before the dawn—and the boots—took over my body.

Philippe knew what came next. He stood, looking over the tips of the trees at the first signs of sunlight. “You’d better get.”

“You’d better get first.”

He nodded, then paused, grinning. When he bowed at the waist, as he’d done when I’d first met him in the shop, my stomach warmed again.

But then he began walking, down the road, out of my life. Or what I had of it until the sun arrived.

I began moving the other way, glancing over my shoulder once, only to find him looking back at me, too, still walking away, keeping his promise.

The foreign warmth in me wavered, making me wish he wouldn’t keep his vow, but I continued forward as the sun grew stronger. Then I ran the rest of the way toward the cabin, heading to a home for the first time in perhaps ever.

Heading toward my own destiny, whatever it might be.

Liz tossed the rag into the dishpan and lifted it to take the dirty dishes to the kitchen. Seven Sassy Sisters Café and Herb Shop used heavy country china and good-quality stainless flatware instead of the cheaper stuff. The customers liked the quality and the homey atmosphere, but being busboy—or girl—was tough on her back.

“I’ve got it,” Cia said, and scooped the heavy pan out of her arms. “Share and share alike,” she added. Liz’s once reticent and introverted twin had been doing a lot of that since Liz’s injury. And it wasn’t necessary. So, okay, Liz got short of breath. And her ribs hurt sometimes. She was still healing, and no one could expect complete and instantaneous recuperation after having a huge rock land on her chest in the middle of a magical attack. By their own coven leader . . . and elder sister.

Grief welled up again, and Liz blinked furiously against the tears. Evangelina’s death had hit all the sisters hard, but the four witch sisters had felt her death most deeply because they had also lost a coven leader, and by the foulest means—addiction to demons. Although the actual cause of death had been a knife blade to the torso, the Evangelina they had grown up with and practiced their craft with for their whole lives had been dead for months before that.

Liz sighed, feeling the weakness in her ribs, a slow, low-level pain, and pulled out a clean rag to wipe down the next table. She was polishing the final booth, standing by the front door, when the flashy red Thunderbird wheeled up and parked. It wasn’t a practical car for Asheville, but it was memorable, and that was what the driver wanted—to be known as an icon in her hometown. Liz huffed out a breath and called, “Cia! Company. And not the good kind.”

Her twin was by her side in a heartbeat. “Is that
Layla
? Too bad we don’t have access to Evie’s demon. It could eat her.”

“Not funny,” Liz said. The demon
had
eaten a few humans before it was sent back into the dark. “Maybe she’s changed since high school.”

“Once a bitch, always a bitch,” Cia said.

“What’s that she’s carrying?”

“A baby goat? What the—”

The door opened, and their archenemy from their high school years stepped in, bringing with her a cold spring wind through the airlock doors. Layla’s face was as beautiful as ever, which made Liz stiffen and Cia narrow her eyes. Layla was black-haired and pale-skinned and skinny and graceful and delicate and feminine and damn near perfect. In high school she’d been the leader of a cadre of girls who had all been gorgeous and popular, most of them cheerleaders. Unlike the Everharts, all of Layla’s pals had been human. And most of them had been mean. Now, just like in high school, the twins stood side by side, facing their enemy.

The inner doors swished closed after Layla and she stopped, standing with the poise of a model, slender and lovely, wearing a Ralph Lauren leather jacket, tailored pants, and a pair of bling-studded Manolo Blahnik ankle boots that were droolworthy. She stared at the twins across the small space and across the years. No one spoke. When the baby pygmy goat under Layla’s arm started to struggle, she soothed it with a gentle hand, and Liz felt Cia stiffen.
Layla Shiffen should not be gentle
.

“Boadecia Everhart and Elizabeth Everhart,” she said, the words sounding almost formulaic, her expression determined. “I require help.”

Cia crossed her arms and made a huffing sound. Liz dropped her rag and mimicked her sister.

The resolve on Layla’s face flickered. “I can pay. And I brought my own goat.”

Liz laughed, the sound slightly wheezing from her damaged lungs.

Cia said, “Help? For what.” It didn’t sound like a question—more like an accusation. Or a challenge. “And what does our help have to do with a goat?”

Layla shifted, her composure faltering again before her lips firmed in determination. “I need you to find my mother. The goat is for the sacrifice.”

“Sac—,” Liz started, then stopped.

“We don’t do blood magic,” Cia spat. She pointed at the door. “Get out.”

“But . . .” Layla’s eyes filled with tears. “But I need you. I said the words right. I researched how to say it.” She sobbed once. A real sob. Not like the fake sobs she’d used in the school play the year she had the lead in
Romeo and Juliet
. “I don’t have anyone else. The police can’t help. Or
won’t
. They say there’s no sign of foul play. They took a missing-person report and that’s all they’ll do,” she said, her words running together. “My mom’s in trouble. I
know
it. And I don’t know where to turn.” Tears fell across her perfect cheeks and dripped onto the silk scarf around her neck. “P-please.”

Neither twin reacted. They still stood side by side, staring and silent. Liz could feel the power building up under her twin’s skin, prickly and cold, like winter moonlight. It was slow to rise, with the moon beneath the horizon, but it was powerful magic, especially when she was angry. Their human sisters must have felt it, too. They stepped in through the archway opening from the herb shop, one with a shotgun held down by her leg. The other sister would be armed as well, non-magical, but deadly in the face of danger. One robbery was all it had taken for their human sisters to find a way to protect themselves. Liz shook her head at them, a minuscule motion.

“Big whoop,” Cia said. “I don’t like you. I remember too much.”

Layla’s face went all blotchy and red under her porcelain makeup. Her nose started running and she raised a wrist to wipe it, bringing the goat close to her. The goat butted her chin and made a soft bleating noise. She tucked the animal under her chin as if cuddling it and said, “Please. You have to help me.” She looked back and forth between them, her expression growing frantic. She clutched the baby goat to her chest. “You
have
to. It’s my
mother
.”

Liz felt Cia shudder faintly at the last word and knew that Layla had won, just like in high school. Nothing had changed since they were teens. “Son of a witch on a switch,” Cia cursed.

Liz sighed and waved their sisters off. Regan and Amelia both frowned, recognizing the woman and knowing her history with the witch twins. But they went back to the herb shop side of Seven Sassy Sisters, moving reluctantly and keeping an eye on the café. Both crises averted—magical and weapons fire—Liz dropped into a booth at the front window and pointed to the bench seat across the newly cleaned table. Liz had good reason to keep Cia busy and off the TV and Internet. Maybe this would do that. “Sit,” she said to Layla. “What’s your mother’s name and why do you think she’s in trouble?”

Layla sat, and settled the baby goat on her lap before reaching into her Bruno Magli Maddalena suede bag for a tissue and patting her face. Liz could almost feel Cia’s covetousness as her twin slid onto the bench seat, reestablishing the arm-to-arm, skin-to-skin contact. Of course, even if an Everhart could afford a bag that went for more than two thousand dollars new, none of the sisters would buy it. Maybe a vintage one in need of TLC and a little magical cleanup. Everharts were notoriously cheap. Covetous, but cheap. Liz nearly smiled.

“My mother is Evelyn McMann. She called me the day before yesterday on her way home from work. We ended the call when she locked the door behind her, just like always. It’s this”—Layla waved one hand in the air, as if searching for a word—“safety thing we do when Mom works late. She works for a developer, and late-night business meetings are common, as you might imagine.”

Liz had no idea what hours developers kept, but she nodded, understanding security measures.

“Her boss called the house the next morning. Mom had missed an important meeting. Which she never did.
Never
.”

Liz had to wonder if that had been a problem to Layla growing up. Maybe growing up second to the job.

“So I went by there. Mom’s house looked perfect, as always. Except her clothes, the ones she wore when we had lunch the day before, were scattered everywhere, like they’d been thrown. Carelessly. There is
nothing
careless about my mother. So I went to the police.” She wiped her face again. “And they made me wait until this morning to file a missing-person report. They think she was having a
fling
and took off with some
man
,” Layla said, her tone bitter. “My mother doesn’t have
time
for a man in her life.
Trust
me. She works fourteen hours a day.
Every day.
Always has.”

Cia nudged her, and Liz knew her twin was thinking along the same lines. Abandonment issues, much? It might explain a lot about Layla, growing up. Not that having issues made them forgive her. Not gonna happen.

“Her keys? Purse? Cell?” Liz asked.

“All on the floor with her clothes.” Fresh tears gathered in Layla’s eyes and she bent over the goat. It nudged her jaw and licked her chin. “I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? Can you find her?”

Cia and Liz shared looks that said,
No. Yes. No. Maybe. No.

Layla eased the goat back into the crook of her arm, placed the expensive pocketbook on the table, and opened the flap. “I can pay.” She pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills and pushed it across the table toward them. Neither twin looked at the money, but they both saw it. More money than they made in tips in a month. Maybe two.

Cia’s magic rose again, like a wave at high tide, hard and powerful and angry. She leaned forward and said, “We can try. Trying is a flat fee of a thousand. Success is another two thousand. Nonnegotiable.” When Liz started to debate the amount, Cia said, “That’s Jane Yellowrock’s fee for a PI job. And she doesn’t have magic. And”—she looked hard at Layla—“if we get your mom back, the fee is required, no matter what shape your mom is in.”

Liz sucked in a slow, painful breath. Layla gasped, her face paling. The comment was blunt enough to be worthy of Jane Yellowrock herself, and the rogue-vampire hunter was honest to the point of being brusque. Cia meant that Layla’s mom could be dead. She was the gentler twin. Usually. Suddenly Liz remembered what it had felt like to be the brunt of Layla’s cruelty—the goading, the taunting. And that one time . . . In that single indrawn breath, the memory descended, full, complete, and awful.

“Boadecia,” Layla had hissed. “Stupid name for a
stupid
girl. Some people think the twins have some kind of
power
. I just think they’re
ugly
.” A shove, hidden from the teachers by the group of girls surrounding them. “
Stupid
and
ugly
.
Ugly
red hair and
ugly
freckles. When Mother Nature messes up, she messes up bad. She made
two
of them.” Another shove. A yank of hair.

The moon had been full that day, making Cia less stable, more reckless, like stormy waves on an icy ocean, pushed by a full-moon tide. Fear had grown up inside Liz, like frozen rocks hanging on a cliff face, ready to fall.

Not fear of the taunting girls, but fear of themselves, fear of losing control. Fear that one of them would erupt and pull the other into her magical reaction through the twin bond. Fear that they would misuse their gifts and pay the price. Then the bell had sounded. They had gotten away, barely, before one of them lost control and they hurt the girls.

Liz blew out her breath.
Yeah. Okay. Cia was right.
That girl who hurt them back in high school was the woman facing them. To an enemy, their services shouldn’t be offered as a gift freely given, the way they were
supposed
to be for one in need. “What she said. That’s our price.”

“No matter what,” Layla said. Her hands trembling, she counted out thirty hundred-dollar bills. “I pay up front. You do your best.” She stood, tucking the goat into the crook of her arm and soothing it with an absentminded caress.

“We need to see the house,” Cia said, her tone still hard. “We’ll need to take something your mother was wearing the day she disappeared. To do a working to find her.”

Layla opened her pocketbook and removed an expensive-looking pen and planner. She wrote her mother’s address down and tore off the sheet. Then she tossed down a business card, glossy and dark, with her contact info on it. “Call me.”

She turned on the heel of the Manolo and left the café, the icy spring wind whipping inside.

“She wanted us to sacrifice a goat kid.”

“She’s an idiot. She called us by our full names, as if we’re fae and can be commanded.”

“Not our full names,” Liz said.

“Nope. I’m not sure we ever told anyone our full names. But I’d kill for those boots,” Cia said.

“I’d fight you for them.”

Her twin gave her a hard slash of smile and said, “Good idea on Jane’s prices, huh?”

Liz nodded and opened her mouth to tell Cia that Jane Yellowrock was in town for the hearing about the day their sister died. About the day Jane had killed her to save human lives. But she closed it on the words. Some things needed to die peacefully, things like the memory of their sister being put out of her insane, raving, psychotic, demon-drunk misery on live TV. So far she had been able to keep the news from her twin. Why spoil it?

Cia handed Liz the address and card and said, “Let’s get set up for lunch. I have the kitchen, and while the soups aren’t demanding, the salads and bread are.” Cia sashayed toward the back. “As soon as we’re done here for the afternoon,” she added, “let’s go by the mom’s house and get this over with.”

“Evangelina never had trouble handling the kitchen,” Liz grumbled. “Why can’t we get the knack? We need to hire a chef.”

“On it,” Cia said from behind the kitchen bar. “Résumés in a stack.” She waved a sheaf of papers in the air. “Maybe we should have a cook-off.”

Liz snorted and headed to the back to wash the breakfast dishes. A café didn’t run by itself.

—

T
he Subaru idled at the curb as the twins studied the house. It was a small home in the Montford Historic District, two-story, traditional, steeply gabled, slate-roofed, painted in shades of charcoal, pale gray, and white. The windows were new, triple-paned replacements, glinting in the cold sunlight. The winter plantings were tasteful, and a batch of early spring jonquils pushed up through the soil on the south side of the house. The white picket fence was newly painted. The bare branches of a small oak tree stretched over the Lexus parked in the short gravel drive.