I watched him as he worked through his thoughts, noting that he still hadn’t answered my first question.
“What are you?” I asked again. I had a few guesses, but I wondered if I was close to the mark.
His hands slid down the steering wheel. “I’m a siren.”
Alan guffawed. “Siren? Like calling sailors to their deaths? Please.”
Himself might not see it in his cousin, but the second Corb said siren I started nodding, feeling the truth of his words even though I’d never heard of a male siren. It made sense, though. That was why he’d brought Suzy into the Hollows—because she was like him and . . .
“So that’s why there’s all that lube in the bathroom!”
Corb groaned. “Actually, no. That was Sarge trying to tempt me. We had a . . . fling when we met years ago. Every once in a while he tries to get me back into the sack.”
I could feel my jaw dropping. Maybe the heat in the car had cranked up, or it could have been the image of the two of them together—let’s be honest, that’s totally what it was—but suddenly I was flushing. I grabbed the envelope and started fanning myself. Hormones, they were going to be the death of me if this curse business wasn’t.
I cleared my throat. “So you aren’t really into me then, you prefer guys.”
Corb swallowed hard. “I swing both ways, but I tend to lean toward women more. It’s . . . being a siren is fluid in more ways than just the water we use to power our magic.”
That made sense. “I could taste the ocean when I kissed you. Were you . . . using your magic on me? Was that even a real feeling between us?”
Corb was shaking his head before I finished. “No. No, you wouldn’t have remembered much if I’d used my magic on you. It has a tendency to erase memories. But I let you in . . . if that makes sense.”
I lowered the envelope to my lap. “You let me see your magic?”
“Something like that,” he said softly, almost as if he were afraid of my reaction.
“This is stupid,” Alan grumbled, and I twisted around in my seat to stare at him.
“You know what’s stupid? You. You’re stupid, Alan.”
“I am not,” he snapped back. “I passed my classes with an A- average.”
I looked across at Corb. “How? How are you two related?”
He reached across the seat and carefully took my hand. “Really, we’re not all that related if you think about it. We’re, like, half cousins. Please don’t hold it against me.” He was grinning as he spoke, and I grinned back.
“I see now why you’re the black sheep of the family. Full of sex magic and naughtiness. Not much of a fit with all those lawyers and doctors on Alan’s side.” I laughed and Corb joined me. Alan did not laugh, which only made me laugh harder.
We pulled up to the front of Gran’s house less than a minute later. From the corner of my eye, the Sorrel-Weed house seemed to shimmer, the bricks turned dark once more. That was where Gran’s and my parents’ stuff was, along with the goblin coin. Damn it, I was going to have to get it back at some point. I let myself out of the car and scrambled forward into the front yard where I felt safe.
Robert stood swaying under the oak tree, his head hanging low. “Friend. Safe?”
“Hey, Robert. Yeah, I’m okay. You okay? That was a lot of whiskey.”
He reached out and tapped a skeletal finger against the oak tree. “Friend.”
I nodded, not sure what he was referring to exactly. That he’d had a good sleep under the tree? That he thought the tree was his friend?
“Anyone home?” I asked Robert, already knowing he couldn’t answer me.
Alan strode past me and down the street. “I’m going to my room—Jesus, what is that?”
I twisted around to see him staring at the Sorrel-Weed house. “You mean the demon watching you from the windows?”
Alan squeaked and scuttled backward until he was partway up the stairs to Gran’s house.
Corb stepped up next to me and Robert let out a grumble that could have been a laugh at Alan’s expense, or irritation at how close Corb was to me. Corb didn’t see him, though, so there was that. We both turned as the rumble of a familiar motorbike cut through the evening.
I stepped out from under the low-hanging Spanish moss first and saw Sarge getting off his bike. Tom had already climbed off and was heading for the small front gate.
“Trouble already?” Tom grinned. I smiled back.
“Are you allowed to help me? I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble right along with me.”
Tom waved a hand in front of his face as if he smelled something bad. “I can see the spell attached to you from here. Easy to remove.”
I blinked a few times. Something about there being a spell on me didn’t sit right, didn’t feel right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. What was it?
“It is? Don’t you need the envelope the spell came from?” I really didn’t want to go into the Sorrel-Weed house anytime soon. Especially in the dark. I mean, it was important to know who’d killed my family, and Grimm would probably want his coin back, but I did not want a repeat with the blood-born demon.
“Well, no, you don’t need the item that the spell came from.” Tom paused, and his dark eyes held me in place. “It’s a subtle spell—the kind of minor manipulation that the average person wouldn’t notice.” His dark eyes were serious as he drew close and dropped his hands onto my shoulders. A smell of burnt toast filled the air as he whispered words that made no sense, more like sounds than words, and his magic curled around me, sinking into my skin and sticking to the inside of my nose.
I sneezed and wiped at my face. “Okay, what now? Blood of a unicorn? Sacrifice a werewolf’s hide?”
Sarge ignored the jab. He was too busy looking around the yard as if he wanted to pee on something. I opened my mouth to warn him off the oak tree and ended up sneezing again. A chunk of something dark flew through the air and splatted on the ground. For all I knew, it was leftovers from the Sorrel-Weed house encounter.
“What the hell is that?” I spat a few times, tasting burnt toast even though I hadn’t eaten anything of the sort.
Tom winked and stepped back, pulling a small pouch from his pocket. He opened it up, pinched something between thumb and forefinger, then sprinkled black dust onto the gob of . . . whateverthehellitwas. “That’s it. It truly wasn’t a bad spell, just one that was meant to deter you. Which it was doing easily.”
Only I wasn’t fully convinced, still feeling weird about a spell being on me that wasn’t really on me. I looked at Tom, but he was already looking away from me. Not meeting my eyes, which was confusing. “Tom?”
“Look, you can owe the Hollows a favor for me helping you, how about that?” He smiled at me, but it was strained around the edges. As if he didn’t want to say it.
My head was shaking of its own volition, mostly because I couldn’t stop staring at what now looked like a slug shriveling up under some salt. That was in me? Gross. “But that makes no sense, does it? I mean, deterring me is one thing, but—”
Tom patted my shoulder. “You didn’t really want to open the paperwork. Something about it worried or scared you?”