Boneyard (The Thaumaturge Series Book 2) (8 page)

“A lot of people are looking for him, Mr. White,” he said coldly. “Do you know where he is?”

My stomach and heart banged into one another. Or at least it felt like that, as my heart dropped and my guts rolled up into my throat. Nonetheless, my voice steadied when I answered.

“No,” I said. “But I hope he shops elsewhere. He’s a douche bag.”

The guy laughed, startling me, and making Dahlia jump. She took the opportunity to slide off her stool.

“I’m gonna... “ she tilted her chin towards the door and I nodded.

“Sure, Dahl,” I said, giving her a bright smile like I didn’t have a care in the world. La la la. Morgan’s body was thirty feet away. “I’ll be over shortly.”

“Kay,” she said and made a hasty exit, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she slid through the door.

I looked back at the guy and found that he wasn’t laughing anymore. Now he just watched me, his eyes shiny and sharp. I swallowed hard without meaning to and he watched, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly.

“Interesting store you have here,” he said without looking away from me.

“Thanks.”

“Are you a witch too?” he asked bluntly.

“No,” I said slowly. “I’m not anything.”

“You’re nothing,” he said, so neutrally that I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or telling me.

“I didn’t get your name,” I said. My insides boiled and rolled, my heart felt seconds away from exploding.

He smiled again and reached into his pocket, pulling out a silver case, from which he extracted a single white business card. He held it out to me and I hesitated before I accepted it.

“Call,” he said. “If you happen to see him. Or any of them, really. Any of them will do.”

“For what?” I asked but he didn’t answer and he didn’t smile. He just gazed levelly at me for a beat and then flounced out the door.

I exhaled, my breath leaving me in a gasp. I looked at the business card in my shaking hand.

Jonathan Weber, Attorney at Law
, it read, embossed in black
. Bradley, Brown, and Associates
. Below that, only a phone number with an unfamiliar area code.

A lawyer? Really?

Not fucking weird at all.

Ten minutes later I reclined in Dahlia's chair with a hot towel wrapped around my face while her hands worked flowery scented soap through my hair. My heart finally stopped pounding and I let my shoulders drop down, exhaling deeply through my mouth.

“Are you okay?” Dahlia asked softly. Her small, pretty face hovered over mine. She rubbed her soothing fingers into the nape of my neck and I almost moaned.

“Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes.

“What was that about?”

“Dunno. Those witches that were in town last week, I guess.”

“Ebron... “ she paused, tugging my hair a bit and I opened my eyes.

“What?” I asked.

I saw the hesitation in her eyes, in the way she gnawed at her cheek.

“Do they have something to do with your work?”

“No,” I said, leaning into the way she pressed on my temples, how the warm towels felt wrapped around my neck. “I mean, I sold them some stuff but—”

Her hands stilled on me. “No. I mean, your other work.”

“Oh,” I said, and closed my eyes again. She waited half a second, and then her hands began to move again, working the shampoo into a rich lather. It smelled so good, like flowers, and the water was just this side of too hot. The towels sat heavy around my neck, a pleasant weight snuggled up around my jaw. With the spray of the faucet and the gentle whir of the nearby space heater, everything felt safe. Insulated, like a den, like a haven. Dahlia's hands moved in gentle circles across my skin and she just waited, letting my secrets be something that I wanted to tell, not something she was forcing out of me.

But that's the thing about secrets, I've learned. Keeping them is an awful lot of work and in the end the truth would probably just be easier.

“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes and looking up into the tin plated ceiling. “Yeah, they do, actually.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked carefully, reaching for a thick towel and wrapping it around my head like a turban. She urged me to sit up, one hand on my shoulder.

I studied her face, her small sharp features. I loved the way she moved with slow and graceful movements, dragging a comb through my hair. Her eyes soft, her hands always trailing over my shoulders or resting on my arm. She said nothing, but her body very clearly offered acceptance, offered love.

“Things are really out of control,” I admitted quietly. She pulled a lock of my wet hair between two fingers. The scissors went
snick snick
.

“Things went really wrong last night. And last week... things went very, very wrong.”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked, her tone soft. She took my head in her hands, angling me about while she studied my hair with laser intensity. She tilted my head to one side and made a few more snips.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Not yet. But there have been accidents. Mistakes. I feel like I'm just waiting to get arrested.”

“Maybe you should stop for a while. Let things cool down.”

“I can't stop,” I said instantly. “Not if I can help people. What if there's—I mean, people might—ugh. People need me, Dahl.”

She nodded, but didn't look at me. She took out a little electric razor and made it burr up the back of my neck, around my ears.

“And Leo's just—”I broke off, shaking my head. Dahlia paused, then gently unwrapped the hot towels from around my neck. The cold air rushed against my skin, making me shiver into goose bumps.

“Are you keeping the beard?” she asked as she began to lather me with shaving cream.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I kinda like it.”

“Me too,” she replied and gave me a faint smile. “It suits you.”

I went still as she put the straight razor to my throat, and her dark eyes flickered up to mine. I gave her a weak smile, feeling the foam sitting on my skin. She smoothed a stray fleck of shaving cream off my nose.

“I worry about you,” she said quietly. The razor scraped against my cheeks. She adjusted me with her fingertips, moving my jaw to this side, to that.

“I don't know what to do,” I whispered back.

“Did you... have anything to do with that girl? The one they found in the dumpster? The body that was stolen?”

I wanted to keep looking at her, to keep my eyes from sliding guiltily away, but I couldn't stop and I didn't have to say anything for her to know.

“I didn't,” I lied, so easily it disgusted me. “But I know who did.”

“And what about that cop? Is that's why the cop is interested in you?”

“Who, Chad? No. He's interested in me for a whole 'nother thing.”

She paused, frowning. “Ebron. Is he
blackmailing
you?”

“No! I mean, I don't think so. He hasn't said that.”

“But he wants something from you?”

“Yes.”

She tilted my head back, running the razor around the bottom of my chin. She drew it around my throat. When she was done, she wiped my face down with a towel, combed back the stray hairs that the towel had mussed, and then spun me around so that I could examine the new me in the mirror.

I looked younger. She had tamed my beard into neat lines, precise around my jaw.  My hair was drying into an artful mess. I had forgotten what my ears looked like.

“What are you going to do?” Dahlia asked, watching me move my head in the mirror, looking at myself from every angle.

“I have no idea,” I admitted and she stepped up behind me, resting her hands on either side of my neck. In the mirror, our eyes met.

“I'm scared for you,” she said.

“I'm scared
of
me,” I said.

I went home and Leo wasn't there. Cody didn't answer when I called him. I thought about texting Marcus, even took my phone out and thumbed his name, but that was just too pathetic, even for me.

Never let it be said that I don't rise above expectations.

The little clock on the oven only read six o’clock, but I filled a glass with water and just crawled into bed anyway, eager to sleep away the rest of my hangover and just get the day over with. I shivered, despite remaining fully clothed and I burrowed down into the cold sheets, smelling my own soap and the very faint lingering scent of Leo. It reminded me of the times I had laid with my face pressed into the sheets, trying to find any trace of Leo's smell after he'd been gone for a while. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my brain to just turn off.

The wind picked up outside and rocked the trailer. Johnny wandered in and I heard him digging at his dog bed. My bed finally grew warm from my body heat and I kicked some blankets off, sat up to take a sip of water, and then lay back down, my eyes finally growing heavy.

I fell asleep, sprawled fully clothed across my bed. I dreamed.

My eyes felt open, but in the blackness I couldn't tell for sure.  I blinked, making out gray shapes in the gloom. My dresser. A chair. My familiar bedroom, then. I sat up in bed. Tiny pinpricks of cold touched my skin, and I lifted my face, seeing the black clouds overhead, smelling the snow before more flakes whispered over my face. I stuck my tongue out to catch some because my throat felt bone dry, my tongue like sandpaper. When I raised my hand to my lips, flakes of skin came off against my fingers.

I got out of bed, my bare feet touching cold, frosted carpet. It crunched when I put my weight on it. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling numb across the backs of my arms.

“Leo?” I called. The door to my bedroom stood open, light spilling in from the hallway. My mouth worked, trying to build up some saliva, but my tongue just scraped against the dry roof of my mouth. I stepped towards the muted glow of the hallway, my feet crushing the frost.

“Leo?” I called again. The carpet ended on the threshold of my bedroom door, the linoleum in the hallway covered in cold water. It lapped over my toes, and I looked down. Oily shapes shimmered on the surface of the black water. Unease rolled in my belly. I felt, very strongly, that if I took another step, I would fall into a deep watery abyss. Slowly, I inched forward towards the warm light of the kitchen, probing the stability of the floor with each step.

Then the hallway ended and I blinked in the sudden brightness. My normal, average kitchen buzzed with its harsh, fluorescent light, homey in a shabby way, and nothing seemed amiss. I made for the kitchen sink, got a glass out of the cupboard and filled the glass with water, draining it to the last drop. The water flowed down my throat without moistening the parched walls of my mouth.

Behind me came a strange, hollow clacking sound, and I turned to see Leo seated at the kitchen table. He sorted through a pile of white bones, shuffling them across the table before selecting one and sucking the end of it into his mouth.

I filled the glass with more water and drank it. “I was looking for you,” I said.

“The rest of the doors are locked,” he replied, and crunched off the end of the bone, splintering it messily with his huge fangs. Another pile of bones lay at his feet, still thick with bloody meat and I gazed at that pile for a long time. I drank more water. Leo selected another bone and cracked it in half. The thick and viscous water lapped at my ankles.

“Have you been here this whole time?” I asked.

“I said, the door was locked.”

Dark water swirled around my calves. I wanted to walk across the kitchen and sit down with him, but the water was too deep. I filled the glass, drank. The water rose to my knees.  My thighs.

“Do you need help with those?” I pointed to the bones and he looked up at me. His eyes shone gold.

“You need to clean them yourself,” he said and held out a bone, red flesh still clinging to it. Bits of flesh caught in his teeth, his mouth smeared with gore.

I couldn't move forward, not into the deep. My fingers just barely skimmed the end of the bloody bone when I reached for it.

“Leo,” I implored, straining for the bone. The water soaked into the hem of my shirt. Small quick things brushed up against me, tapping against my skin, testing me with tiny teeth.

Leo gave the bone a little shake, impatient, encouraging me to take it.

“You have to clean them yourself,” he insisted.

The water closed over my head.

I woke up with tears on my face, my chest heaving. I blinked at the darkness, confused, frightened. I didn’t know what was real.

“Shh,” Leo whispered, snuggling closer to me under the covers. I turned into his arms, resting my head on his bare shoulder while his hand snaked under my shirt and stroked my sweaty back. Hooking my calf over his legs, I pulled him closer, clutching him while my racing heart calmed.

Leo turned his head and pressed his nose into my hair. “I’ve got you,” he said softly. “I’ve got you.”

Chapter 6

Friday I decided that enough was enough and closed the store early again so I could drive out to the ranch during daylight. My work ethic really had never been my strong point but I still felt a twinge of guilt as I sat in my truck, watching a trio of ski-bums examine my hours of operation with confusion. Cody still hadn't returned any of my calls or texts, though, and cornering him at the ranch seemed to be my only option. And truth be told, the store felt a little ominous to me right now, what with fucking creepy lawyer crawling about, asking questions.

Not to mention the corpse.

I turned off the pavement and onto the muddy stretch of road that led to the ranch, driving past sun-drenched stands of willows, snow melting from their branches. Five minutes from town and mine was the only vehicle on the road, the occasional cluster of mailboxes the only indication that there was anyone for miles. Snow-dusted fields stretched on for miles past the fences of looping barbed wire. The sun warmed the cab of my truck and I felt my shoulders loosen and my legs fall a little wider as I relaxed into the seat. I turned the radio to the classic rock station from Missoula and just sang along through the static.

Despite not having any official stake in the Brock ranch, I spent plenty of time there, especially during calving and branding seasons. I rattled over the cattle guard and parked my truck beside one of the enormous horse trailers. Some of the ranch dogs came spinning in the yard, barking wildly until they recognized me and I took a second to crouch down with them, scruffing their ears and the tops of their tails.