Page 133 of Power of the Mind

“Tomorrow if I can get to the store.”

“Fabulous.” To Baby, he said, “Can you hold off one day? If not, I’ll send him to the store right now.”

I found one of the packages of ginseng tea Janek had sold me and scowled at the list of ingredients on the back. What the fuck was skullcap? It sounded poisonous. Did I trust this woman? Had she lied to me?

“I swear to god, if this shit doesn’t work, I’m taking the whole lot of it to the dumpster, and Janek is going to refund me my eighty-seven dollars, or she’ll see what homicidal looks like.”

Abandoning Baby, Tallus smirked as he approached and peered at the bag of bullshit tea.

“Do you want one?” I asked, finding a ceramic mug.

“No thank you. It sounds horrid. I’ll stick to lattes.”

I grunted and fiddled with the contraption Janek had sold me for filtering the tea leaves because the manufacturers couldn’t be bothered to put them in those disposable ones like Nana drank. Instead, I had to use a spherical stainless steel reusable thing with a fancy fucking chain and a dove on the end. The ball came apart to be filled, and it took a second to figure out how. I poured the tea leaves into the open half and secured it before bringingit to my nose and sniffing. It already smelled like fucking feet. Great.

Tallus helped himself to a bottle of water in the fridge and wandered to the couch, flopping down and looking defeated. He drank and flipped through the printed files. “I don’t know what to do from here, Guns. Help me out. I need your wisdom.”

The water came to a boil, so I poured it into the mug. Wet, the leaves took on a gag-worthy stench, and I wrinkled my nose. This was going to be terrible. I bobbed the fake teabag in the hot water, watching the infusion, wondering if its supposed properties would be as effective if I made the tea weak. Janek had suggested two to five minutes, but I couldn’t stand how it looked and smelled.

Begrudgingly, I let it sit. My craving was too intense to play games.

Tallus glanced over the back of the loveseat. “You said Sandra, aka Sally, or whoever was not financially stable, right? She filed for bankruptcy, and that’s why you think she changed her identity?”

I grunted, half listening, still making faces at the tea.

“So, it’s possible Rowena, who knew how to steal identities, helped her get set up.”

With another distracted grunt, I removed the stainless-steel contraption and set it aside. I sniffed the witchy potion again, wondering what had happened to me to make me resort to herbal teas in place of cigarettes. Where was the man who didn’t give a fuck? Who frequently flew into violent rages. Who drank, smoked, cruised Spark, and got into bar fights. Where was the man who refused to socialize and preferred isolation? Who worked alone, no matter what?

Now, I was having tea parties and discussing cases with a guy who had become a regular… lover. It was hardly the right word. Lover implied mutual companionship and mutual enjoyment,and thus far, I failed to give Tallus either of those things. What I offered was a half-satisfactory, impersonal fuck, a whole lot of nonsense, and headaches. Never mind the baggage I lugged around.

His words to Memphis came back to me. Tallus had made a bet. A bet he’d lost. A bet he’d been so sure about. I recalled the disappointment in his tone when he’d said it wasn’t meant to be—implying he wanted it.

It made no sense.

Why me? What could he possibly see in a guy like me?

“Guns? You aren’t listening. Are you reading the tea leaves or something? I think you’re supposed to drink it first before you can do that.”

I rattled the maudlin thoughts away and brought the mug to the loveseat, still unsure about the tea’s smell.

“Do you think Sally helped get those files to Rowena because she owed her or because Rowena was paying for a service?”

“I don’t know.” Warily, I sipped the tea. The second it hit my palate, I spat it right back into the mug. “Holy fucking Christ, that tastes like swamp-ass.”

Tallus smirked. “Money well spent?”

I set the mug aside, snarling at it and scraping my teeth along my tongue to eliminate the awful taste. “Disgusting.”

I had no beer, no cigarettes, and negligible sanity remaining. I couldn’t think straight.

“You all right, Guns?”

“No. I need gum… or something.” I needed a forty of liquor and a pack of Players. I needed to stop thinking about what Tallus wanted from me and focus on this godforsaken case.

“Give me a sec.” I went to my partitioned-off bedroom and rooted in a few drawers. There had to be a pack of gum somewhere. I’d even take a hard candy at this point. Sugar helped sometimes.

As I searched, a knock sounded at the door.

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