A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel) (16 page)

H
enry didn’t stay much longer. He got the information she had to give him. He gave her shit for making him drive forty-five minutes for a run-down, then left to get some ‘real work’ done.

Bobby was still sleeping and Leah still wasn’t talking. She’d disappeared into the attic.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Leslie said, rocking Kamden in her arms, a bottle in his mouth. “Tyler and Mandy go up there all the time. One of them probably mentioned it to her or somethin’.”

It irked Paige that she wasn’t able to spend any time with her daughter and the girl was in the same house with her. But it also irked her that she was forgetting that Leah was a person, not a thing to be coveted and controlled. She wanted to yank Leah out of the attic and talk to her, hug her, love her.

But if the girl needed some alone time, then that’s what Paige was going to give her.

Which left her with nothing to do. Well, she could go through demon books. “Where are Great Grandma’s journals? I need to start going through them.”

Leslie gave her a frump-lipped, wide-eyed expression. “Attic.”

Perfect excuse?

Fuck it. Paige had a job to do. She needed to go through her Great Grandmother’s journals anyway. But she also needed to see if there was anything mentioned in them that would lead Paige to Heather’s killer. Granted, angels weren’t demons, but some demons were angels. She might have something in there that might be helpful.

“Where’d Grandma go?”

“Nap.” Leslie searched the dining room. “Dexx,” she yelled.

A thumping sound came out of the garage attached to the kitchen and a muffled, “Yeah. Hold on!” followed. He opened the garage door, dirt on his face, wiping grease off his fingers.

Leslie curled her lips. “Ew. What are you doing?”

“Giving your car a tune-up.”

“Oh! Then, work away.”

“What did you need?”

“A baby sitter. Paige and I need to go to the attic.”

“Ah.” His expression said he knew what was going on.

“Not because Leah’s there,” Paige said. “Great Grandma’s books are there.”

“Oh. Where’s Alma?”

“Taking a nap.” Paige hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Did you want me to go wake her, because I can.”

“Oh, no.” He held up his hands. “Can I just keep the door open and listen for baby wailing?”

“Sounds good to me.” Leslie put Kamden next to a still sleeping Bobby in the play pen. “Wow, this one really sleeps.”

“Must be all that propheting he’s doing.” Dexx shoved his red rag in his back pocket and headed back into the garage. “Don’t die in the attic.”

Paige frowned, shaking her head. “Whatever.” She led the way to the stairs. “I’ve got a question.”

“Okay,” Leslie said, following.

“Why would Rachel pull Leah from school? Why would she risk it. Aren’t there laws about attendance or something?”

“Yeah. There are. Unless she’s being homeschooled.”

“And, she…is?” Paige had a hard time wrapping her head around Rachel being a teacher.

“Yeah. And, according to Rachel, she’s doing great.”

“Huh.” Well, it
was
just a thought.

“So, what do you want to do later?” Leslie asked.

“You think there’s going to be a later?”

“Heck yeah. You’re going to get bored looking through those journals real quick. They’re in a different language, most of them. So, yeah. Bored. And sleeping babies? No kids?”

“Leah.”

“Who’s hiding. Yeah. What do you want to do?”

She had no idea. “Go to the shooting range?”

“Oh! I’d love to. Can’t afford the range fee this week, though. We could go on Monday. It’s ladies’ night. All we have to pay for is ammo.”

“Excellent. Let’s do that.”

Leslie pushed past Paige on the stairs. “Okay. Then, let’s go to Target.”

“Really? When you’re bored, you go to Target? When you can’t afford the range fee?”

“What do
you
do?”

To be honest, Paige hadn’t been bored in a really long time.

“And don’t tell me you screw Dexx.”

“Leslie! Language.” Paige chuckled.

“The babies are sleeping, so I can talk anyway I like.” Leslie stepped onto the second floor landing and headed down toward Paige’s room. “The electricity coming off you two is sizzling.”

“Really?” Paige hadn’t really noticed it. She’d been too busy with other things.

“Oh my blessed Mother,” Leslie exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? What horrible luck drew Dexx to a woman who can ignore her own libido?”

Paige shrugged, her mouth open. “I’ve been busy.”

“Focused, is what you mean. So many things are making sense, now.” Leslie opened the door opposite Paige’s and went up the tight stairs. “I had thought you could just go through cold spells. But now I see you just get so focused that everyone else just gets cut off.”

“What?”

“You focus so much on what’s going inside your head, that you shut off your emotions.”

“I do not.” Yeah. She kind of did. Did that make her a bad person?

“You do, too. Any normal woman would have ripped that man’s clothes off the first time he shared her bed. And he’s been in your bed how many times now?”

Paige missed
this.
The quick, off-the-cuff, don’t-think-before-you-speak banter. “I told him I loved him.”

“Whoa. You didn’t.”

Yeah. “It’s true. He’s my best friend.”

“So, you told him you loved him and you haven’t even slept with the man.”

“I’ve slept with him.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You haven’t had sex with him.”

“You know what?” Paige stopped on the tight stairs, leaned against the wall, and glared at her sister. “Everything is all about sex. It sells everything. Does it sell people, too? I don’t know about you, but I kinda would like a relationship with a man I want to
talk
to and
do
things with. Not just screw him.”

Leslie stared up at her. She blinked once. “Tell me you’re not a born again Christian or that you rediscovered your virginity.”

“Goddess, no. But…” Paige flopped her hands against her thighs, her shoulders slumped. “I’ve had flings. I’ve had relationships based off sex.”

“But?”

She closed her eyes for a long moment before opening them again. “I want what I had with Mark.”

“Ah.” Leslie’s lips pursed.

Mark Eastwood. Leah’s father. The only other man Paige had ever loved. Their relationship had been fast and short. Within the span of a year, they’d married, gotten pregnant, and then she’d buried him.

“Makes sense. However. In all these weeks—it’s been months, Pea—you couldn’t test drive him?”

“We’ve been busy. There was Louisiana and then there was the murder case in Denver, and then he was bitten.”

“And in all that time, you two couldn’t fuck?”

“Hey!” Paige’s head popped into the attic. She grabbed the rickety railing at the top of the stairs and stepped into the wide room. “Leah
is
up here.”

“So, I’ll teach her a few new words. Rachel will
love
it.” Leslie stood in the middle of the room and searched.

“Words you wouldn’t teach your own children?”

“The merits of being an aunt instead of a mother. Where did those books go?”

Where did Leah disappear to?

The attic was open along the entire expanse of the immense house. Stuff filled the space between the slant of the roof and the wooden floor. Overstuffed chairs and bookcases, a large china hutch, and several traveling trunks took up quite a bit of space on the far end. A large desk dominated the other side.

“How did this crap get up those stairs?”

Leslie shrugged. “Grandma said that the stairs weren’t always enclosed. When they put in your and Leah’s rooms, they put walls on the staircase.”

“And made it impossible for anything else to come up or down the stairs?”

“Did you want a room or not?”

“Hey, I’m glad for the room.” Though, she didn’t remember it being built. It had always just been there.

Oh, if walls could talk.

“Right. So. Dexx.”

“Oh, shut it.” Paige walked toward the desk. “Didn’t you just have the books a few weeks ago? You were reading them when I was solving that murder case in Nederland.”

“I was pregnant.”

“Excuses.” It had been so long since Paige had been pregnant, she had a hard time remembering all the things she’d forgotten, but she did vaguely recall her coworkers giving her a hard time for the things she’d failed to complete. Vaguely. She’d slept since then. A lot. A lot of sleep-filled nights. When was she going to get another one of those? Oh. There were so many wonders of being single. Why was she fighting so hard to be a parent again?

“If you and Dexx tangoed in the sheets, maybe you’d remember what it was like to lose your mind to pregnancy.” Leslie rummaged through the shelves at the other end. “I swear, I put them right here.”

Something shifted behind a wall of boxes near Paige.

Probably Leah, hiding, wanting her space. “Okay. Well, let’s just find the journals and then go. I don’t want to pester Leah.”

“And we have better light downstairs, anyway.”

After several minutes, however, they still didn’t find the journals.

Paige and Leslie regrouped in the middle of the attic, frowning at their surroundings.

“You’re sure you left them up here?”

“Yeah.” Leslie rubbed her head, her brown hair fanning through her fingers like a super model. “I couldn’t fucking read them, Pea. Why was I going to haul them downstairs if I couldn’t read them?”

“Your kids go away and you swear worse than a sailor.”

“It’s a freedom I enjoy. You’ll understand in a few days. Trust me.”

“Where would they be?”

“Who else would be up here looking at them anyway?”

Paige clamped her lips shut and opened her palm. She reached inside of herself, touched on the source of her power, and pushed it into the center of her hand. “Where are Great Grandma’s journals?”

A light flared in the palm of her hand. It rose in the air. Dust particles lit up like glitter.

“Oh, blessed Mother,” Leslie groaned and covered her mouth. “We’re breathing that.”

“And we’re not dead.”

“Shut up, jerk.”

The light rose into the air and sped away, toward the desk.

Paige and Leslie followed.

“I swear,” Paige said, “I searched the desk.”

The light circled the desk a few times, then ducked behind the wall of boxes.

Frowning, Paige stepped around the boxes and folded her arms over her chest.

Leah huddled behind them, the journals poking out of her shirt. She blinked her brown eyes up at Paige, an expression of abject horror filling her expression. “I didn’t do anything. I swear.”

That seemed genuine, though with someone who knew how to manipulate people, it was hard to tell. But something about her slumped posture, how her hands were placed in front of her, how her knees were curled up in front of her abdomen spoke volumes. Or it was just her mother instinct in her raising her hackles.

“Are those journals you have there?”

Leah shook her head.

Leslie pressed her shoulder to Paige’s. “Yeah. That’s them.”

“What are you doing with them?” Paige asked, thoroughly confused.

Leah licked her lips.

Paige craned her head forward. “Lee? What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay. Then, can I have those books that aren’t shoved up your shirt?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because?”

“They’re not your books.”

“They’re not yours, either!”

Paige raised her chin, narrowing her eyes at her daughter. “What does Rachel want with them?”

“What?” Leah straightened, her eyes widening as she looked around.

“What does Rachel want with Great Grandma’s journals?”

“Nothing.”

“She sent you up here to retrieve these?”

“No.” Leah shrank in on herself, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“So, she brought you here so you could sneak up here and get these books. Why else? What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Leah stared up at Paige, her mouth hanging open, her expression incredulous.

Oh, to be a kid again, thinking that
that
was going to work. On anyone. “And you expect me to believe that?”

“Yes!”

Paige shook her head, her mind racing. What would Rachel glean from these journals? Why would Rachel even want them?

So Paige wouldn’t have them? Would that be reason enough? She drove all the way from New York to Texas.

“Did you really drive down here?” Paige asked.

Leah startled and looked around, confused. “Yeah.”

“Did Rachel tell you anything?”

Leah shook her head almost frantically.

So, Rachel
had
told her something. “Are you a necromancer?”

Her eyes wide, Leah licked her lips.

“So, no.”

Leah opened her mouth as if to say something.

“Has your gift even presented itself yet?”

Leah froze.

Paige narrowed her eyes.

Leah sighed and shook her head twice, her expression sullen.

Paige turned and looked at her sister. “Rachel planted Leah. Gave us a sob story so we’d take her in.”

“Knowing we’d take her in anyway.” Leslie’s dark eyes flared, anger seething from them.

“Yeah.” Paige turned back to her daughter. “The question is why.”

Leah opened her mouth, putting her hands on the floor.

“No. No, no.” Paige gripped Leah’s ankles and pulled her knees from in front of her chest, then grabbed the journals and pulled them out of Leah’s shirt. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“But—”

“Nope.” Paige wrapped her arm around the journals and maneuvered around her sister to get to the stair railing. She stopped there and looked at her daughter.

Leah stood beside the wall of boxes, her shoulders slumped, her blond hair a tangled mess.

“Look, Lee. You don’t know me from Jack, but you did once. You trusted me. You loved me. And I never used you against anyone you loved.”

A frown furrowed Leah’s brow.

“I’m not going to start now. I’m taking the books. You’re not allowed into Grandma’s workroom without her there with you.”