Page 14 of Midnight Auto Parts

Halfway through, Rollo started cursing a blue streak in Creole. Kierce’s temper was getting up, so I dispatched him to locate Badb and Carter. Since her phone’s guts littered the road, he set out on foot to search for them. They couldn’t have gone far, but I would be lying if I claimed that I wasn’t anxious being left alone.

“If she doesn’t wake in the next five seconds—” Rollo’s temper boiled on the other end of the line, “—I’m gonna drive to your shop, snatch you up by the scruff, then drag you to the first necromancer I can find and tell them who you are, what you’ve done, and order them to turn you in to the Society for punishment.”

Oh, yeah. He had a crush on me. Those were definitely the words of a man in love.

Vi really had to move past her generation’she’s only mean to you because he likes youmentality.

When a man treated you like dirt, it was because he wanted to scrape you off his shoe.

“I didn’t ask her to come. I didn’t know to expect her before she appeared to me.” I spun it around on him. “Why didn’t you call to warn me? Why would you let her zip out to the middle of nowhere on a whim?” I clicked my teeth together before I pivoted toward blaming Vi for dropping in unannounced. “What can I do? How can I help?”

“Forget her number.”

The call ended with a snarl that would have made a warg proud and did a fine job of breaking my heart.

Rollo never had cared for me, but after I took his spot as Vi’s apprentice, he enjoyed hearing from me about as much as receiving a letter from the IRS. I understood he was hurt, but that wasyearsago. Did he plan on holding it over my head for the rest of my life?

Butt thumping onto the grass, I drew my knees to my chest and rested my forehead on them.

A warm beak nudged the hair from my eyes moments later, and Badb rasped comforting noises at me.

“They were a mile up the road.” Kierce waded through grass to reach me. “Already on their way back.”

For him to have gone that far and returned, Rollo had been chewing me out for longer than I thought.

“How is your friend?” Kierce crouched beside me. “Did she return to her body?”

“She’s unconscious.” I rubbed the phone screen with my thumb. “Rollo will call with an update soon.”

Otherwise, I would be driving to New Orleans to see her condition for myself.

A doctor, an old family friend, as in he had been the Fontenot family doctor since Vi’s mother was a little girl, lived next door. Jean-Claude Dancosse. He was always on standby when she traveled via astral projection.

Usually Jean-Claude waited in the next room with a vintage comic book spread across his lap. He would have reached her bedside in seconds. He would be, right this very minute, working his magic on her. She would wake up in no time.

Vi would be okay. I had to believe that. I couldn’t wrap my head around the alternative.

“This isn’t your fault.” Kierce smoothed his palm down my back with halting strokes. “You couldn’t have anticipated this.”

“I should have told her—and Matty and Josie—the second I understood what happened to me, but I was a coward. I could fool my siblings for a while, I knew that, but then I convinced myself Vi wouldn’t notice a damn halo the next time she checked on me from the spirit plane. I knew she would find out, and I knew I would get an earful when she did, but I didn’t expect her to appear out of thin air on the side of a road. That was my mistake. Scaring her so badly she projected herself into an unknown situation.”

“Vi couldn’t have located you if she hadn’t reached out to Josie or Matty,” he reasoned. “The spirit plane is vast. She can check on you when you’re home, because it’s familiar ground, but she couldn’t have isolated your whereabouts without help.” He waited to see if that made a dent in my self-loathing. “Josie had already told Carter where you were, and you updated Josie on the situation here. She would have told Vi exactly what she was walking into before she decided to visit you.”

“You’re right.” I hadn’t seen through my guilt to the facts, but Kierce was right. Vi had a fail-safe for every possible outcome. She was neither impulsive nor reckless. “Her first line of defense is her grandson. Rollo hates me. He wouldn’t have anchored her if he felt she was at risk, and definitely not for my sake.”

“Rollo.” Kierce repeated the name as if committing it to memory.

As dragging steps neared, I craned my neck for a glimpse of Carter. “Oh Lord.”

Her other boot was now missing, and so were the top buttons on her dress shirt. She must have—what? Ripped them off and flung them at Badb? Sadly, I could picture her doing just that. With malicious glee.

A few yards from where I sat, she gave up and dropped onto the grass to catch her breath.

That was when my phone blared, further hollowing out my stomach as I picked up on Rollo. “Well?”

“Anyone ever tell you your voice buzzes at a frequency not meant for human ears?”

The dulling edge of his hostility told me Vi was okay, but I knew better than to ask to speak to her. He would only laugh in my face and block my number on her phone. I had experience with that trick.

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