“That’s a lie,” Marx declares, with a cocked brow, his tone a dead ringer for Maury Povich’s.
Shit.
I forgot Vox Witches could hear that. Stupid walking, talking lie detectors. Rookie move, Lennox. Rogan’s face clouds with anger, and for some reason that makes me feel better.
“Don’t look at me like that. If I’m holding back, you only have your own omissions and cagey behavior to blame,” I defend and release a resigned exhale. “I’m not sure what it means yet. If I decide it’s pertinent, I’ll tell you. That’s how you two like to roll, isn’t it?”
I turn and stride back into the house, dodging Rogan’s effort to grab me again and stop me. I duck out the door leading to the garage but get boxed in by the two of them before I can go any further.
“This isn’t a game,” Rogan growls as he lords over me, backing me into Marx until I’m pinned between them.
“I’m not playing one. This isn’t tit for tat. I need to see the other Osteomancers’ houses before I know if this is even relevant,” I defend.
“Fine, I’ll take you to them, but keeping anything to yourself right now is a stupid move. It could mean life or death in the end if it was pertinent,” he grumbles, his stare both angry and desperate.
I give a derisive snort, hating that he’s right. I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “The pile of ashes inside the rowanberries are from the grill outside. I don’t know what purpose the presence of the smashed berry circle serves, but I think its only purpose is to throw anyone looking for Elon off.”
“How do you know this?” Marx questions, and I shoot him a glare. He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m not saying you’re lying, it’s just a side effect of what I do, I question everything.”
“Because when I went into defensive mode, I tapped into every bone that exists on the property. I wasn’t picking up on anything unusual inside the house because the bones that had this information aren’t inside the house,” I explain.
“Your brother’s familiar is a corgi right?” I ask Rogan.
“Yeah, her name is Tilda,” he confirms.
I nod and continue. “Well, Tilda was chewing on a venison rib bone when she watched the ashes being moved into the house and the berry circle drawn around them. You’ll find a different piece of her burnt collar on the ground around the grill.”
“Did she see who did it?” Rogan asks, grabbing my arms as though he’s ready to shake the answer out of me at the first sign of resistance.
“That’s the thing,” I hedge as anxious butterflies riot in my stomach. “It was your brother.”
15
“Tell me again what you saw,” Rogan grumbles, the engine of his SUV growling ferociously as he stomps on the accelerator.
I try not to roll my eyes at the request or the maniacal driving, but I lose the battle. “I saw your brother dump the ashes from the grill into his living room. I mean, I saw it through Tilda’s eyes, but you know what I mean.”
Rogan’s hands clench around the steering wheel, his knuckles going white, and I grab onto the armrest on the door when he takes a turn a little too fast. Good thing we left Hoot at the house earlier. That furball would be a windshield pancake otherwise.
“Then I saw Elon hooking a halter around Tilda and leading her out the front door. She stopped to drop some deuces on the lawn, and because your brother doesn’t pick up after his familiar, I saw in the bone matter she left behind, that he had on a big pack, the kind you use for camping. That’s all I got,” I repeat...for the third time.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” he whispers angrily for the thousandth time, and I swallow down an exasperated sigh that wants to punctuate my annoyance.
I should feel bad for Rogan. I know he’s going mad worrying about his brother and what happened to him, but I’m finding it hard to reach my soft empathetic side through all the hurt and bitter anger I feel surrounding it.
“Then who the hell is Nik Smelser?” Rogan questions...again.
“Like I said before, I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s relevant to anything. It’s just the name the bones gave.”
“Fuck!” Rogan snarls, slamming a hand down against the steering wheel. I jump at the unexpected outburst, and my fight or flight instincts get ready to take over the show.
“I get that you’re pissed, Rogan, but I don’t want to die. So slow down and chill out or pull over so I can safely get us somewhere where you can execute the epic tantrum that’s clearly crawling under your skin.”
He doesn’t say anything, but the car gradually starts to decelerate, and I inhale and then slowly release a relieved breath.
“Like I said back at Elon’s house, there’s no point jumping to any conclusions until we have more information. Marx is looking into things now, and he said he would let us know when it’s clear to go look at the other Osteomancers’ houses.”
“But why would he willingly leave?” Rogan argues, and I run my fingers through my curls in frustration, pleading with my ancestors for patience.
“Dude. Pay. Attention!” I growl, clapping three times to punctuate each word. “We don’t know that he did. It’s hard as hell to interpret the world through a dog’s eyes. I’m literally reading information from bone matter in shit. Maybe Elon left on his own. Maybe he was spelled. Maybe he was coerced some other way. There could be a logical explanation for all of this. Or maybe the Osteomancers are all working together to bring out the cult in occult. We just don’t know yet.”
A yawn forces me to pause. I need to up my caffeine intake, or I’m about to pass out.
“I need coffee and a massive grilled cheese, oh and pie, or something pumpkiny. But not pumpkin coffee, that shit just tastes like burnt Thanksgiving. If you can get me somewhere that has grilled cheese and tomato soup in the next ten minutes, maybe I’ll stop being as pissed as I am with you...maybe.”
The car accelerates again, but this time, my stomach and I welcome it. I’ve definitely entered the hangry phase of my exhaustion cycle, and it’s not being helped by everything that Rogan and Marx revealed back at Elon’s house. I replay the conversation, picking apart things that I feel like I still need answers to. I lean back in my chair and turn to face Rogan as he races to make things up to me.
It dawns on me that I should probably appreciate that he’s trying, that he cares enough to attempt to make things right in some small way, but we’ll see how I feel after I get done grilling him.
“Why did you and Marx suspect my grandmother?” I ask, ticking off my first question on the list I made in my head.
“What?” Rogan asks, looking over at me for a moment before focusing back on the road.
“You said that when you found out that my grandmother was gone, you thought maybe I had something to do with the disappearances, and that was why Ruby couldn’t read or sense anything. But after that, you said that you suspected her too. I want to know why.”
“Suspected is probably the wrong word. Marx and I were just trying to look at things from all angles. Ruby was the strongest Osteomancer alive. So it could be argued that if someone was trying to meld the branches, she’d be the only one powerful enough to do it.”