“Pardon . . . what?” I stumbled over the words. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, seems like you’ve stirred the ants’ nest quite sufficiently.” He smiled and there wasn’t anything about it that screamed mean, but I still took a step back. “Just wanted to make sure you remember you owe me a favor. Try not to die before I call it in.”
I wanted to wrinkle my nose and tell him off, but he wasn’t wrong. It was part of the deal that had allowed me to reclaim the book. I did owe him a favor. “Are you cashing it in now?”
“No, no,” he waved his hands in the air, “I just wanted to remind you. That’s all. Oh, and you should take that book.”
He tipped himself forward in something that resembled a bow at the waist before he turned and strode away. Just a reminder, my ass. How had he known where to find me?
But he’d just told me to take the book of Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead, and I’d barely opened it. Had he put it there? I hurried to catch up to him, but he was already gone, the slippery little leprechaun.
I turned and stared at the aisle I’d hurried through. Putting my hand back on the shelves of books, I let my fingers trail along the spines again. Because maybe he was wrong and maybe . . . the same sticky hot feeling rushed through my fingers and I jerked my hand back.
Damn book was apparently coming home with me. I grimaced and pulled it out, stacking it on top of the book on editing so I didn’t have to touch it.
Muttering under my breath about how stupid this was and how I didn’t want a stupid spell book that felt like death incarnate, I made my way to the front counter and put the two books on the table. Feish hurried up beside me. “They had two of Swank’s books. I can’t wait!” She set them on top of my two and the shopkeeper rung them up, giving me the stink eye the whole time.
I paid the bill with a twenty, took my change, and said nothing else. Feish quickly noticed I was quieter than usual.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oster Boon was in there. He reminded me that I owed him a favor.” I held up the mid-sized, deceptively simple-looking book. “This was in there, too, and he thought I should take it since it stuck to my damn finger.”
Feish took it and flipped it over in her hand. “A blank notebook?”
“Open it. Read the title page,” I said.
She did as I asked and all but threw the book at me, her face paling around the gills to an even paler yellow-green. “That is . . . that is bad. Maybe the worst kind. Could be how to raise a demon in there.”
“Yeah. I figured it was something bad like that.” I made myself open it again. Scratched under the title was a very faint signature. So shadowy, I couldn’t make it out. I closed it and put it into my hip bag.
“Agreed, agreed. But bad. So bad.” Feish shuddered and made a burbling sound as if she were underwater. “Keep it safe, maybe.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” I said.
We made our way back to where Jinx waited. I held up the book on editing which she plucked from my fingers. “It looks well used, which made me think it would have a lot of good suggestions . . .” I trailed off as she began yanking pages out and eating them. “Well, whatever. Tell us about this goblin who needs help.”
Please gawd don’t let him be in the wildlife preserve. We’d already had two major cases out that way, and I’d had enough of trees and marshy water for a good long while.
“West of the city is the goblins’ territory unless you go through Faerie land to get there,” Jinx said around a mouthful of paper, “but this goblin is hiding in the Marshall House downtown. Away from his people. Says someone is trying to steal a family heirloom. Wants to talk to you.”
I wanted to smack my hand against my forehead. That hotel was seriously haunted. I’d walked by it a few days ago, the first time since my return to Savannah, and I’d felt the malevolence from a simple walk on the other side of the street.
Likely because of the same reason I felt the house next to Gran’s had amped up its “freak out Breena” vibe. Something had changed in me, making me more susceptible to the undead.
“Are you sure?” Please, please be wrong. And then the rest of what she’d said clicked. “Wait, he wants to talk to me?”
“He said that’s where he’s hiding. He asked me to find out if you would help him, but not Crash. He doesn’t want Crash to know.”
Feish bobbed her head along with Jinx. What the hell? Had these two had a prior discussion about this? I was betting every dollar I’d stashed away that they had. They were up to something.
That thought had me frowning. “Why would he not want Crash to help him in the first place?”
Feish tapped my shoulder. “Goblins are Unseelie. Darker fae, but not darkest fae. Boss is Unseelie too. But there is a rift between him and the one who says he is king of goblins. So goblins don’t always trust the Boss because the king kills those who go to Crash.”
I muttered a line of lyric from the real Boss, the words flowing off my tongue without thought. “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. Everybody’s out on the run tonight, but there’s no place left to hide.”
Jinx and Feish looked at me.
“Is she okay?” Jinx asked. “Did she get hit in the head?”
Feish shrugged and wobbled her fish lips. “No idea, she is just kind of strange, I think.”
The irony was not lost on me that a river maid with gills and fish lips along with a talking spider who thought she was an editor thought yours truly was strange.
I waved a hand at the two of them. “Never mind. Jinx, why didn’t you tell Crash?”
She paused from shoving chapter thirteen into her mouth at a rate that would have choked a horse to speak around the pages.
“No. He didn’t come by. You showed up first. First dibs,” Jinx mumbled and then sighed. “So good. This book is just magnificent.”
So weird.
Well, a job was a job, and if I couldn’t find a way to reverse all the debt Himself had managed to foist onto me, I needed every job I could find.
I looked at Feish. “I guess it’s time to pay the Marshall House a visit.”
5
The plan was for me to drop our stuff off at Gran’s house and for Feish to get us food—she was still hungry—before we met outside the Marshall House to speak with a goblin. A goblin who wanted me to help him, and to keep it a secret from Crash.
Curiouser and curiouser. The intrigue of it had me more than a little excited.
Our plan was solid, but I got derailed in an unexpected way.
I snuck through the back door at Gran’s, quiet as I could, and stuffed the black-spell book and Feish’s new romances into the cupboard next to the fridge. When I came back later, I’d show the book of spells to Gran and ask where she thought I should hide it. My fingers lingered on the cover. I swallowed hard, and at the last second, scooped it up and shoved it back into my bag.
“You are going to be trouble,” I whispered.
A creak from upstairs made me wince. I did not want to hear Suzy and Eric knocking boots, thank you very much.
“Sorry, Gran, you’re on your own,” I whispered.