Page 33 of Amber Gambler

“Why do I feel like it’s going to get weirder?” Josie settled in. “I have these vague memories about wards and not telling anyone the tree is cursed?” She stared at the ceiling. “I can’t remember. I drankalot that night. I also made out with Carter, probably, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. The hands were way bigger than I imagined hers to be.” She cupped her boobs. “I’m talking full coverage, but she’s so tiny?—”

“Maybe we should hit Lure again this weekend.” Matty snickered at her. “Let you live your Cinderella dreams.”

“Please tell me you’re not suggesting we let randos grope our sister—” I ignored the spark of interest in her eyes, “—until she finds the pair of hands that fits just right?”

“That’s not Cinderella anyway.” Josie shot him down quick. “That’s Goldilocks. She was the one who kept trying the bears’ things until she found the one that was just right. For it to be Cinderella, I would have had to leave my boob for Carter to find and?—”

“As I was saying—” I did my best to imagine my brain as a toilet I could flush to rid it of this conversation for all time, “—it turns out the burning tree is divine in origin.”

“No.” Josie said it matter-of-fact, an end to an asked question. “That’s Elmo, who is just an elm.”

“Kierce is a death god.” Matty pegged me with a wary glance. “That kind of divine?”

A death god’s personal assistant, but it might as well be the same thing for all we knew about his job.

“The dendrologist who came out to examine it couldn’t tell.” I filled them in on Moore, her visit, and her findings. “The answer is in the fruit apparently.”

“Elm trees don’t produce fruit.” Josie made it sound likeah-ha. “She clearly doesn’t know her trees.”

“Except the tree is…mutating? It’s got flowers. The fruit they produce will tell us who’s responsible.”

“Divine fruit is bad.” Josie wrinkled her nose. “Nothing good comes from eating it.”

Arching a brow, I jabbed her hip. “How do you know?”

“I spend a huge chunk of my day talking to trees, and the topic of good and bad fruit comes up, okay?”

Enough she was happy to wash her hands of the situation and leave it to Moore to handle.

“Elmo will become a religious mecca if it’s discovered before this tree doctor handles the problem.” Matty grimaced. “Humans will flock to it, and so will any paranormal creature with mortal loved ones. Even if its fruit doesn’t grant eternal life like the myths claim, no one will believe us when we tell them. They’ll claim we’re hogging the fruit for ourselves. This is a disaster.”

“Let’s not panic yet.” I raised my hands. “We don’t get to keep the tree either way.” That was what I read into Carter’s comments anyway. “Good trees get transplanted and monitored. Bad trees get destroyed.”

“Poor Elmo.” Josie’s eyes filled with tears. “He didn’t ask for this.”

“There’s one other thing.” I tucked a stubborn hair behind my ear. “I kept a leaf from the tree.”

“Of course you did,” Matty said in athat was a terrible ideavoice.

“Badb stole it.” I noticed Josie lip curl. “She was upset after the tree was warded, I guess, and took it.”

As possessive as she was toward Kierce, her most recent theft convinced me more than any other evidence that he was behind the tree.

“Where is the feathered terrorist?” Josie flicked the cat bed. “I haven’t seen her since we got back.”

“No clue.” I panned my gaze around the room. “I was mad about the leaf theft and locked her in before I left. She’s gotten out of my apartment before, so she could be anywhere.”

A firm knock on the door shot Josie to her feet. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No.” I checked for signs Aretha had forgotten something, but nothing was out of place. “Harrow?”

“Harrow,” Matty agreed. “He waited in his car.” He winced the tiniest bit. “I forgot all about him.”

“Me too.” Josie grinned at me. “Must have slipped my mind he was still down there.”

Matty was tired, so I could buy into his slip. Josie? Pfft. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“Mmm-hmm.” I jabbed her in the hip with my thumb. “You would have let him sit there all night.”

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