Page 55 of The Wolfing Hour
“I barely know him,” she replied, a non-answer that told me more than if she’d admitted it outright. She was in love with him, but she didn’t yet trust him with her heart. That made sense. After all, they were both liars.
Speaking of…
“Tell me everything,” I said. “From the moment you first heard of this organization right up to my next breath. Fill in all the blanks. Keep in mind I dislike being lied to—you’ve already had a glimpse of how much.”
She smiled. “That was aglimpse?”
“I cannot express enough,” I said, frostily, “how much now is not the time for flippancy.”
Her smile disappeared. “Understood.”
Margaux strode up to the front door, took down theBack in Ten Minutessign, and flipped theClosedsign instead. She made sure the door was securely locked, switched off all the lights, andushered us into Bronwyn’s office, the one with the entrance that was spelled to be hidden.
Bronwyn plopped into the chair behind her desk. Margaux and I took the chairs in front of it and gazed expectantly at the witch we’d thought we knew.
“I was twenty-three and recently divorced,” she began.
An hour later,I was in my Mini heading back to Smokethorn via the farm roads. I left Margaux and Bronwyn to cast a spell to find Mason. It was going to take at least an hour of chanting, according to Margaux, and after the way I’d lost control of my magic today, I didn’t trust myself to commit to an hour of being inside my own head.
I’d played it off as cool as I could, but the truth was, the appearance of Demon Betty shook me. It was appealing, tantalizing—even addictive—to slide into nothingness and just act. To not have to pit my morality against my instincts.
And it was terrifying beyond measure.
My heart sped up, and the edges of my vision darkened. I pulled onto the ditch bank of an open irrigation canal and took some deep breaths. The water in the canal was at its highest level, and it flowed like a Zen sand garden, barely a ripple.
I pictured myself floating on its surface, and my body reacted as if I were drowning. My stomach churned, my breath shortened, and panic overtook me in great, gasping sobs. I opened the driver’s side door and vomited onto the dirt then yanked it shut, rested my forehead on the steering wheel, and let the tears come.
Because my brain was nothing if not unhelpful, it threw thoughts at me like a mean boy throwing rocks. Most missed, but some struck me right in the chest.
“The official name is The Esteemed Order of the Removal of the Blight on Humankind. We call it the Organization.”
“To them, you’re subhuman, not worthy of consideration.”
“We track demons.”
Bronwyn’s later words came at merat-a-tat-tat, pummeling my head.
“Someone reported you to the Org. Someone who had access to them, and that’s information that isn’t given out freely. You’ve got an enemy in Smokethorn, Betty. Someone who knows what you are.”
“But I didn’t even know what I was,” I said aloud.
“I know you, Betty. You aren’t the sort of being I’ve tracked before. You’re good and kind and forgiving. You have love for your friends, family—even for a taught witch you barely knew,” she’d said. “There’s a reason I stopped reporting about you and made Mason keep quiet, too. You’re a force for good, and we need as many of those as we can get in our world. You’re not a demonic entity needing to be cast into Perdition.”
Her voice faded away as the worst of the panic attack passed. I leaned back in my seat and stared at the sky through the windshield. Pictured myself as a leaf floating on the wind until I calmed.
“But here’s the thing, Bronwyn,” I said to the empty car, “Iama demonic entity.”
I uncapped a warm bottle of water, swished a drink of it, and spat it out the window. I repeated the process then dumped the rest of the water on my sick, washing what little was there away.
It was nearly three, I hadn’t eaten in hours, and my head hurt. All I wanted to do was go home and run straight intoRonan’s arms—I didn’t care if he was still angry, he could just hug me mad, damn it.
Unfortunately, this bullshit day wasn’t close to being over. I put the Mini into drive, burned a U on the dusty back road, and headed back to La Paloma.
I needed to talk to my friendly neighborhood gravedigger demon.
The day was warm, not the triple digit degrees it would reach soon, but the high nineties, for sure. Surprisingly, I found Sexton walking the cemetery with another bag, stooping now and then to pull a weed or pluck a dead flower from a vase. He was still wearing what I was starting to think of as his “grandpa clothes,” though today his slacks and windbreaker were khaki.
I watched him through my windshield while “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath played on KLXX. It was a welcome change from their normal fare. Sometimes you needed a little Ozzy to get through the day.
