“How do you figure?” Clay dropped his gaze back to the woman. “What are you seeing that I don’t?”
“A wendigo case brought you out here,” I reminded him. “You handled it and left.”
“Asa and I,” he said, mulling it over. “Not you.”
“She determined you only work black witch cases,” Asa surmised, “and raised the wendigo as bait.”
“Zombigo,” I corrected, “but yes.”
“She set the trap for you,” Asa said, voice rough, “with the belief you would bring this book with you.”
A book worth luring me to the middle of nowhere to collect left me little doubt of the title in question.
“That’s how I read it.” I bobbed my shoulders. “Otherwise, she would have made her demands of you.”
Neither a golem nor a dae carried books of power on their persons, aka grimoires, but witches…
Black or white, from charms to herbs to wands, we believed in accessorizing.
I angled my head toward Asa’s voice, careful to avoid admiring his bare torso or the dress pants slung low on his hips from his other form stretching the waistband to the breaking point. Okay, fine, so I took it all in. For science. Medical science. He had been shot, after all. He might need a field medic. I wasn’t one, but I did have a poultice or two in my kit that might patch him up until we got back to the cabin.
“You’re bleeding,” I said, proving my grasp on stating the obvious.
Unconcerned, he kept his stare fixed on me. “This changes things.”
Our simple zombie case had blown up in our faces, and we had to dig through the debris for fresh clues.
“We need to head back.” I stood before him, fingers running down his taut abdomen, the muscles clenching beneath my examination. “You’re hurt, and we need to get your wounds treated.”
Sliding one hand behind my neck, he pulled me toward him until I was close enough for him to touch his forehead to mine. “Your concern honors me, but I’ll be fine.”
“I’m fine too.” Clay gripped my arm, hauling me back. “Don’t worry about the holes in me, Rue.”
The sudden movement cause the daemon to burst from Asa’s skin in a flash of fire. “Mine.”
“Not yours,” I reminded him, shoving him back for good measure. “Clay was right to break us apart.”
Many times, I had read about the phenomenon of the world shrinking until it only held two people.
That moment, with Asa, was the first time I had experienced the heady rush for myself.
I yelled at those heroines, ready to throw their books at the wall. I called them total idiots for letting their guard down in battle just to smooch their hero. Yet there I had stood, recycling Asa’s air, with a dead body a foot away.
I was a total idiot.
“As much as I would love to go back to the cabin, we’ve created a problem.” Clay glanced between us. “If that was the zombigo’s—which is still a dumbass name—handler, then we’ve just unleashed it.”
“Any active workings would have died with her,” I disagreed, confident in my assessment. “She was too weak to leave a lasting construct.”
The zombigo, wherever it had gone, ought to have collapsed where it stood when she died.
Our backup team could track it down, by smell alone, and cremate the remains.
Problem solved.
Case closed.
Go team!