Wicked Business (24 page)

Diesel rolled into the bakery at noon, looking fresh as a daisy.

“You slept all morning, didn’t you?” I asked him.

“Not
all
morning.” He helped himself to coffee. “I see you have a minstrel today. I had my window down when I drove by, and he was singing about Glo’s fuzzy peach cheeks.”

Glo opened the bakery door and threw a bagel at Hatchet. It hit him in the head and knocked his hat off.

“Stop it!” Glo shouted at him. “I
hate
you.”

Mr. Ryan followed Glo back inside. “Do you have any cheese Danish left?”

“Sure,” Glo said. “How many would you like?”

“I hate to take you away from all this fun,” Diesel said, “but I have a meeting set up with Anarchy, and I need you to come with me.”

“Now?”

“I’m meeting her in the parking lot of the Waterfront Hotel. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll bring you back here after.”

I looked over at Clara. “Is that okay?”

“Yes. You’re done baking, and you can do cleanup when you get back. Take whatever time you need.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you’d jump the curb and run over Hatchet for me,” Glo said.

Diesel smiled at her. “He’s in love.”

I changed out of my chef coat, grabbed my shoulder bag, and we went out to the car.

“Why do I have to go with you? Do you need a witness to the defusing?”

“I’m not doing any defusing. The request has been withdrawn.”

“Why?”

“I suspect it has to do with Wulf. Technically, Anarchy has his power, and maybe he thinks he can get it back somehow.”

“Can’t you take it away from her and give it back to Wulf?”

“That’s not in my skill set.”

“Then why are we meeting with her?”

“I spoke to her this morning and told her we were ready to trade her half of the tablet for the real stone.”

“You don’t have the real stone.”

“She doesn’t know that,” Diesel said.

“When she finds out she’s been tricked again, she’s going to burn my house down.”

“Honey, she was going to burn your house down anyway.”

I felt my face screw up into a grimace.

“Don’t look so worried,” Diesel said. “I won’t let her burn your house down. Where would I sleep? Where would I eat?”

“Your own apartment?”

Diesel turned off Derby Street into the hotel parking lot. This was the middle of October, and it was crazy time in Salem. The streets were packed with gawkers, zombies, witches, and ghouls arriving early for Halloween. They came by chartered bus, hired limo, junker, and SUV. They mingled with the locals, some of whom already were a little nutty on their own, in the bars and shops, and they marched in the streets.

About twenty zombies were gathered in front of the hotel, most likely waiting for a tour bus. Anarchy was
standing apart, closer to the waterfront, and she looked more like one of the zombies than like Dierdre Early. She was dressed in something Catwoman might wear, except without the mask with the ears. Her short black hair was slicked back. Her lips were bloodred. Her eyes were black-rimmed with heavy liner, and some of it had smeared. Hard to tell if the smears were by accident or design.

“Do you have a rock for her?” I asked him.

“It’s here on the console.”

I looked at the rock. It was very similar to the real thing. Smooth, small, brown.

“This is the wrong rock,” I said to him. “Her last rock looked like this, and she smashed it with a hammer.” I searched in my bag for the crystal I’d picked up in the grotto. “She can’t tell if the rock is empowered, and she doesn’t really know what it’s supposed to look like.” I found the crystal and held it out to him. “I put this in my purse just in case we needed it. Give her something pretty that looks like it would have some value.”

“Smart,” Diesel said. “I like it.”

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 my feet into high-heeled ankle boots, and hung big hoop earrings from my ears.

“The stone is going to be overkill for you tonight,” Diesel said. “You’re not going to have any trouble finding true love in those jeans and that sweater. In fact, you might find it if you stayed home.”

A horn beeped outside.

“That’s Clara,” I said. “She’s picking me up. She’s the designated driver.”

Diesel went to the door with me. “Be good.”

I grabbed my jacket and my shoulder bag and ran to the car.

“Do you have it?” Glo asked when I got in.

“It’s in my purse.”

“Can I see it?”

I hauled the stone out.

“It’s sort of ugly,” Glo said. “It’s just a plain old rock. Are you sure it’s special?”

“Yes. And we have to guard it with our lives. And we can’t tell anyone we have it.”

Clara drove out of Marblehead and took Derby Street to Bum’s Sports Bar. There were lots of televisions playing various sporting events that no one was watching. High-top tables and stools. And a long bar that was packed with zombies and werewolves. We elbowed our way into the bar, and Glo and I got a beer, and Clara got a Coke.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m not sure what the stone is supposed to do, so I guess we stand here and see if it radiates anything from inside my purse.”

“I think I’m feeling something,” Glo said. “I might be in love with the werewolf next to me.”

Clara and I looked over at him.

“He seems like your average werewolf,” Clara said.

The werewolf picked up on our attention and turned to us. “Arwoooh,” he said. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Sort of,” Glo said.

“Well, how do you feel about dogs? I can go from furry to naked in 1.3 seconds.”

“Now I remember why I never do this,” Clara said.

“How about you?” Glo asked, turning from the werewolf to me. “You’re the one carrying the stone. Do you have romantic feelings for any of these zombies?”

“Not yet.”

I didn’t have feelings for the zombies, but I was feeling cuddly for someone I couldn’t completely identify. Diesel, maybe. Or possibly Brad Pitt.

We stuck it out for another twenty minutes. There was a lot of hooking up going on, but not for us.

“I think the stone is a dud,” Glo said. “I have better luck on my own.”

“Maybe it’s that the stone finds true love, and our true love isn’t here,” I said. “If it was still the Luxuria Stone inspiring lust, we’d be in the right spot.”

“This is sort of embarrassing, but I had some lust for Wulf today,” Glo said.

“I had lust for Andy Sklar,” Clara said.

Glo chugged her second beer. “Isn’t he the guy who comes in every day and gets a banana muffin?”

“Yeah,” Clara said. “I think he’s cute.”

They looked at me.

“Diesel,” I said. “I have a lot of lust for Diesel.”

They both knew I couldn’t do the deed with Diesel.

“Forbidden fruit,” Clara said.

We left the bar and stepped outside, where the Halloween crazies were parading up and down the sidewalk.

“There are more trolls than usual this year,” Clara said.

I was relatively new to Salem, and I had a hard time telling trolls from ghouls. For that matter, I had a hard time with the whole Halloween obsession. I mean, I like Halloween, but this was Halloween gone gonzo.

“The Exotica Shoppe is open late tonight,” Glo said. “It’s only a block away. Could we check on my frickberry?”

We walked the block to the Exotica Shoppe, and I held tight to my handbag the whole way. I was feeling the responsibility of the stone, thinking I’d done a dumb thing. What if I was attacked by a purse snatcher? What if Anarchy somehow discovered the crystal wasn’t the SALIGIA Stone, and she was out looking for me? What if my absorption of the stone’s power hits critical mass and I find my true love? And now for the really scary part—what if it’s Wulf?