Page 63 of Witches of Dubious Origin
The elevator dinged and we arrived at the basement. The doors slid open and I pushed off the wall, ready to start looking for a body bag, not a task I ever thought I would have to do.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” a voice barked.
The man in front of us looked like someone you’d find if you wandered off the path deep in the woods. He was short and wide with a head like a melon. His jowls flapped when he spoke and his nose sported the broken red capillaries of an alcoholic, making it seem red in appearance. His eyes were narrow slits tucked into the folds of skin that draped over his eyelids. He smelled faintly of tobacco, and despite his small stature, I found him terrifying.
“I think the better question is what are you doing here?” Olive demanded. “I thought your kind wasn’t allowed near the dead anymore.”
The man barked back a laugh. “This from the likes of you.” His gaze narrowed. He sniffed the air like a dog catching a scent. Then his eyes went wide. He stared at Olive with equal parts fear and excitement. “What are you?”
“At the moment? Annoyed.” Olive glowered and waved her arm. The man moved aside, but I could have sworn it wasn’t of his own free will.
I glanced at Jasper. He didn’t seem surprised at all. I then looked at Eloise. Her eyes were as wide as mine. What did Olive mean when she’d saidyour kindto this man? Was he another otherworldly being that was going to give me nightmares?
I braced for the worst when I exited the elevator, still pushing the laundry bin, and moved aside so that Jasper could wheel out the stretcher.
“Body bag, ghoul,” Olive ordered.
Ghoul? The man was a ghoul?!My brain raced to remember the origin of ghouls. They were first noted in Arabic folklore as a demon class of jinni. Oh. My. God.
“The name is Malachi,” the ghoul said.
“Don’t care.” Olive crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him.
The man licked his withered lips and said, “What’ll you give me for it?”
“More like what I won’t do to you so long as you do my bidding,” Olive countered.
She lifted her hand and I watched in fascination as the tipsof her fingers were suddenly engulfed in blue flames. Eloise gasped and the ghoul, Malachi, blanched.
“All right, fine, you’ve proven your point.” He backed away and I took in the room where we were standing. It looked like an operating room. Sterile, with big steel tables, overhead lights, and lots of equipment. Along one wall I noticed large metal drawers, the sort that stowed bodies. I felt my knees get weak.
Malachi tossed a big black bag at Jasper, who snatched it out of the air with reflexes that seemed almost too fast to track. Almost.
Jasper removed the sheet and Eloise and I assisted him with getting Moran stuffed into the sack. The rot that had been evident upstairs had increased exponentially and I thought I might pass out, except Moran didn’t smell as bad as he had before. Maybe my sense of smell had been blown out by the stench. How no one had noticed the effluvium of the corpse in the elevator was a mystery to me. I glanced at Olive. I was certain she had contained it somehow, but I didn’t think now was the time to ask.
On the far side of the room, Olive was having a heated conversation with Malachi, which ended with him stomping away from her in a full sulk. To me, pissing off a ghoul—a ghoul!—was the stuff of nightmares, but Olive didn’t seem to care. She sauntered back just as Jasper finished zipping the body bag.
“Malachi is going to get us transportation,” she said. “The four of us and a corpse will never fit in the vehicle we came in. I’ll have someone from the rental agency pick up the SUV and deliver it to our hotel.”
“Where is Malachi getting this vehicle from?” Jasper asked.
“I don’t care so long as we can fit the four of us and our deceased companion in it,” she answered.
“Just keep him away from me,” Eloise said. “I have enough body parts falling off. I don’t need a ghoul helping himself to any others.”
A wave of dizziness hit me and I grabbed the edge of the steel table to steady myself. This was an actual conversation. A dead person was announcing that she didn’t want to be left alone with a ghoul so he wouldn’t make a snack out of her.
“You all right, Zoe?” Jasper asked.
“Nope, not even close,” I said. “How is a ghoul working here? Aren’t they known for eating the dead?”
“Yes, they are,” Olive said. “Usually they stick to cemeteries, but Malachi apparently has some sort of special dispensation from the local witch’s council to work here. His father is a very powerful mage.”
“Supernatural nepotism?” Jasper asked, but before Olive could answer, she was interrupted by Malachi.
“Here are your keys. Now go.”
He threw a set of keys at Olive with, I suspected, the intention of hitting her. Jasper caught them before they had the chance. He handed them to Olive, and she glanced at the tag and smiled. “This will do. Good work, Malachi.”
