Page 25 of Fiends and Familiars
I stood. “Roaches. Then starlings who are pooping all over some dude’s BMW. Then carpenter bees boring into the side of a woman’s garage.”
“Exciting.” She waved me on. “I’ll see you Sunday. Love you, Addy.”
“Love you too, Cass,” I told her as I herded my sidekick out the door. “Love you too.”
* * *
The restof the day went easy, for once. The roaches were amenable to relocation. The starlings were easily convinced that a nearby shopping center was a better place to hang out, and the carpenter bees liked the nice rotted log I provided them far more than the woman’s garage. I swung by the grocery store and picked up several fifty-pound bags of dog food as well as a dozen bones from the butcher and something labeled as “squirrel feast.” Then as a treat I stopped by the bar where Babylon worked for a drink—well, a drink and to talk to her about my date tonight with Ty. I might be reluctant to talk to Cassie about a possible romance, but Lonnie and I had always been close, not only because we were the youngest sisters, but because our magic was a bit “out there” compared to the other witches in our family.
Drake and the squirrels had been pissed that they couldn’t go inside. They were even more pissed that I locked them in the truck and hung one of Bronwyn’s amulet wards on the antenna to keep them in. The human world was far less tolerant of animals in business establishments, and I couldn’t exactly pass off a vulture and four squirrels as service animals.
“Here. Eat up.” Babylon plopped a plate of jalapeno poppers in front of me along with a cold beer, then sat down. “What brings you in today? You look like you’re dying to tell me something.”
It was Monday and the place was empty aside from a guy over at the corner of the bar nursing a pint. I motioned for my sister to sit down and slid the poppers to the center of the table. We munched on them while we chatted, then I remembered the bone.
“Hey, I found this up on Savior Mountain this morning,” I told her as I dug it out of my pants pocket. “A huge oak tree had come down. It had a split down the middle with some horrible stinky black oozy stuff in it, and this.”
Babylon took the bone from me and turned it over in her fingers. “Why would this be in a tree?”
I shrugged. “I assumed maybe some animal was hiding their food in that crack in the trunk? Dogs bury bones. Squirrels hide food.”
“But this is weird,” she mused. “At first glance I’d assume it was a long bone from a small mammal, but it’s not shaped right for that. It looks more like a finger bone.”
A finger bone that big wouldn’t have been a small mammal. “That’s creepy,” I told her.
She grinned. “I’mcreepy, remember? Babylon, the necromancer witch? The witch who loves all things dead?” She stuck the bone in her pocket. “I’ll check it out when I get a chance. I’ve got a spell or two that will tell me what it is, or who it is. Maybe there was a graveyard up on Savior Mountain at one time, and the fallen tree turned up a few bones.”
She was probably right. There were graveyards in Accident, but some folk didn’t like the idea of burying their dead in a designated spot. Some folk didn’t like burying their dead at all.
I changed the subject to something less ghoulish, and told Cassie about my other adventures on the mountain this morning.
“I didn’t know badgers had giant schlongs,” she said.
“His balls were proportionate.” I took a sip of my beer, thinking how nice it was to not be sitting in front of the television with my pajamas on tonight. Cassie was right. I needed friends and I did need a boyfriend. Or at the very least I needed to get laid.
“It’s not like you haven’t seen most of the shifters in Accident totally naked.” She waved a popper at me for emphasis. “Remember Marcus at the Fourth of July party two years ago?”
I rolled my eyes. “Marcus gets naked at the drop of a hat. And he screws everything he can get his hands on. I can’t believe Cassie dated him.”
“Screwable, but not datable—that’s what I always said.” Lonnie stuffed the popper into her mouth.
I’d never really thought of Marcus as screwable. The panther shifter had always been too smooth for my tastes. Once again, the image of a horned figure came unbidden to my mind. Damn, that had been one sexy dream.
“Speaking of dates…” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “Guess who has one tonight? This witch right here, that’s who.”
Lonnie squealed. “Who? Where? Oh shit, tell me it’s not with the werebadger.”
I recoiled in mock horror. “There’s not enough lube in the world for that guy, no matter what Cassie says. No, I’m going out with a guy I met at Pistol Pete’s at lunch. He’s new in town. Some kind of fae. He’s Master of the Hunt or something, which means he’s gotdogs!”
Lonnie squealed. I squealed. A dog lover. It was a match made in heaven. Hopefully he liked vultures and squirrels as well.
“Tell me what he looks like.” She leaned her elbows on the table and put her chin in her hands.
“Tall, but not freakishly so.” I frowned for a second. “Taller than any fae I’ve ever known. He’s probably around six-one or six-two.”
“Thatistall for a fae,” Lonnie commented. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one over five-six.”
I shrugged. We had our fair share of fairies, pixies, and brownies, but maybe only the short ones were coming to Accident.
