Wayward Devils (Souls of the Road #4)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

S itting in a hotel room with two women—witches, come to find out—who were doting on a certain little Moon Rabbit, who was secretly an attention-starved starlet, didn’t do much for my mood.

That I was the least important person in the room was evident. That Abbi was the most important was also evident, and she was eating it up like a three-scoop bowl of ice cream.

I’d find it funny if I weren’t being bossed around.

I’d been instructed to pull up the spare chair and sit, and to hold my arm steady.

“Hold it level,” the doctor, Cassia said. “Level, please.”

“It is level.” I shifted my hand trying to straighten it out. “Enough.” The pain throbbed—less if I didn’t move it, all the way up to stabbing if I did.

The pills Cassia had given me—

—“ Ibuprofen. Stop looking at it like it’s poison. When I want to poison you, I’ll put it in your beer or hide it in a cookie.” She regarded me through narrow eyes. “Or a chunk of cheese.”—

—did some good to take the edge off.

“It’s fractured,” she said, while digging in the doctor’s bag on the bed next to her.

“Might be broken, but—" She looked up at me. “Wiggle your fingers.”

I wiggled.

“Fractured,” she muttered, pawing through the bag again. The clatter of glass and metal and something that sounded a lot like a startled frog filled the air. “Let’s start here.”

She withdrew a modern brace, an Ace bandage, cotton, cotton pads, and a small brown bottle of liquid. One last swipe through the bag produced a soft towel, which she spread over my lap.

“How long have you been on the road?” Her voice was slightly kinder now that she’d settled into applying first aid. She spread a matching towel on the bed and staged the supplies.

“You can’t tell?”

“I’m a witch, not a psychic.” She nodded to herself. “More than a short lifetime, that much I can see.”

“One long lifetime,” I said. “Overly long.”

“A curse or circumstances?”

“What’s the difference?”

“This might hurt. Hold steady. And level.” She gave me a pointed look.

I corrected the angle of my arm. The liquid was first, tipped out onto cotton pads. I was taken by how gently she worked, to sanitize my skin, elbow to fingertip.

“A curse has intention behind it,” she said in a softer voice. “Someone has to draw it up. Someone has to pay a price to make it viable. To make sure it sticks.”

I grunted.

“Many different sorts of people and things can do it. Set a curse.” She dropped the used pads into the cheap plastic trash can, then picked up a terry cloth and dabbed at the moisture left on my skin.

I shivered.

“I’m…experienced in spotting curses,” she said. “Have a knack, if you understand.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s one of your specialties because you’ve had practice cursing a lot of people.”

She chuckled, and it was deep and wet. “Let’s just say I’ve spent a few years perfecting my interests.”

“Cursing people,” I repeated.

“Well, not just people,” she allowed. “I’m not speciesist.”

She discarded the cloth and picked up a roll of fluffy cotton with a stitched backing. “Lift.”

I lifted. She wrapped the cotton, starting around my knuckles and working her way to mid-forearm.

“You don’t think I’m cursed?” I said.

She made an indeterminate sound. “Curses work a certain way, follow certain rules. To undo them takes skill.”

“Gods have skills.”

She stopped, scissors in one hand, cotton spooled out in the other. “Are you telling me the Moon Rabbit removed your curse?”

“No.”

It was her turn to grunt. “One of the meddling gods then. A trickster?”

When I didn’t answer, she snipped the cotton and tucked the end of it into place.

“There are gods I won’t get involved with,” she said. “There are gods you shouldn’t get involved with, either.”

“Who said I was involved?”

She drew thin, stretchy bandaging off a roll and repeated the wrapping process.

“I think…I’m aware our meeting isn’t a coincidence, Mr. Gauge. I’ve been surrounded by magic since my first breath. I can recognize when the Fates are poking their fingers in my eyes.”

She finished with the wrap, then picked up the arm brace, tugging on the tabs. Hook and latch scratched apart in short, quick jerks.

“We—my family—have fallen into difficulties.” She nodded toward Franny who was listening in rapt awe to Abbi telling a story about werewolf ghosts and moon cookies. “Choices and actions we’ve made. Things that aren’t easily undone.”

She carefully positioned the brace on my arm and indicated I could let go of my wrist. She took over, placing the brace and supporting my wrist before letting me put my hand back under it.

She threaded tabs through slots, pulling the brace tight.

“I was searching for our answer, and here you are now. I think you’re our answer, Brogan Gauge. Or at least part of it. But before I can ask you the questions, I need to know which gods you’re tangled with.”

She pressed the last straps across my palm, her fingers warm and firm.

“Wiggle,” she ordered.

I wiggled my fingers.

She squeezed each of my fingertips, looked at my nails, then sat back and folded the towel in her lap. “Let go of your wrist. Let’s see how it feels.”

I released my wrist, ready for the pain, but it was muffled. “It’s good,” I said. “Doesn’t hurt as much.”

“It will as the swelling goes down. Tighten the straps if it feels too loose, but don’t tighten it so much you lose circulation in your fingers. Understand?”

“Not my first fracture.”

“Good.Then I’ll spare you the lecture on what to do if you run a fever, if you become nauseous, if you feel dizzy.”

“Rest, elevate, hydrate,” I recited.

“Someone’s taught you well.” She braced her palms on her thighs, elbows sticking out to the side, reminding me, fleetingly, of a grasshopper ready to jump.

“Gods,” she said. “How many are you connected to?”

“Questions like that usually come with prices to be paid.”

“All right, here’s my ante. I’m a witch, you know that. I’m part of a powerful coven. We have connections. Connections that will help you with your vampire problem,” she pointed at my wrist, “your past curse problem, and if you play your cards right, your finding whatever it is you’re searching for problem—yes, I can see that in you too.

“We—my family—can help you find the thing you’re tied to. The thing you can’t figure how to cut free of.”

The spellbook, of course.

She nodded. “Whatever just put that look on your face? That’s the thing we can find.”

“How can you find something when you don’t even know what it is?”

“Because I’m a witch, not a whiner. So. Tell me which gods have you dancing on their strings? I’ll tell you what I want you to do for us, and we’ll find the thing…it’s magic, isn’t it?” Her nose went up like she had caught the scent of something on the wind. “You’re looking for something made of god magic.”

“I didn’t say–”

“You didn’t have to. I’m not a psychic, but I am no fool. Make a decision, Mr. Gauge. Tell me the gods you’re connected to in exchange for our assistance, or I’ll just move on. I’ll even throw in the brace for free.”

This was something I wanted to do with Lula. A risk, a decision we should both agree to take.

But I didn’t know where she was, and the pain and shock of being attacked by a vampire—

— Lula blank-eyed on the floor. I couldn’t move, was pretty sure I’d stopped breathing. All I could do was watch the monster bend over her and sink its teeth into her neck—

I wiped my face with my good hand, glanced at Abbi who was sitting on the back of the couch braiding Franny’s hair. Franny sat on the seat cushion below her watching me.

Lorde hadn’t been bothered by the witches in the room, content to snooze on the couch, her head on Franny’s lap.

Which, I supposed, was a sign of its own of how dangerous the witches were.

Lula had made decisions without me—had spent a lifetime doing so.

But this time it was up to me.

Abbi had been right. We needed friends, or if not that, allies. And so far, Franny and Cassia had been helpful and not unkind.

It was a risk to trust them. But there wasn’t any way to live a life without risk.

“We are tied to one god,” I said. “Have only made promises to one—Cupid.”

Cassia’s eyebrows rose. “One of the old gods. Are there others you’ve crossed paths with?”

“Death.”

She blinked. “ Very old gods. Is that it?”

I hesitated.

“Who else?”

“We’ve met Raven.”

“Of course he’s in the middle of this.”

“Not in the middle,” I said. “He made an offer. We haven’t taken it. Not really.”

“An offer from a trickster god? More like a slow stabbing with a dull blade. Anyone else?”

“There is a god who has hunted us and tried to kill us. At?.”

She sucked a breath and held it, fingers digging into her thighs. “ There’s the problem.”

I grunted.

“Did you cross her?” she asked.

“We weren’t the ones who started this. Lifetimes ago, she sent monsters to attack us, to change us.”

“Were the monsters vampires?” Cassia said it as if she’d heard this story before, as if she knew my past as well as I did.

“Why would you think that?”

She released her thighs, tipped her head down, and looked up at me. “Because, Brogan Gauge, vampires are the problem we need help with. Not just any vampires, but the ones who I think turned you into a spirit and Lula into thrawan .”