I swallowed in my nervousness. “My . . . ex-boyfriend used to call me Ellie.”
“Well, he’s looking for you, and he doesn’t sound like he’s a sane one.” She opened her eyes. Instead of those brown pupils among white, her entire eyeballs had transformed to a gray film that brightened in front of me. I shrieked and jerked back, but her hold on my face tightened. She shushed me and whispered, “Don’t move or this will hurt the both of us. You don’t want this kind of pain, girl.”
I shivered under those tiny fingers as they became colder. Power radiated from her skin and vibrated against mine like one would experience in a mounting heat wave or sitting on the hood of a car right as it started. There was something there that I couldn’t touch or see, but slid against my skin, nonetheless. I didn’t like it. Whatever it was, I trembled some more as the cool sensation moved over my flesh.
“He’s looking for you. He’s turning up every stone to find you and each time he doesn’t see you, he screams your name. This man isn’t nice. Is he?”
My lip quivered. “I don’t think you’re talking about the same person. He isn’t—”
“He is a bad one.”
Hex and Alvarez entered the studio. She released me and blinked a few times. The gray film disappeared and revealed those brown pupils from before.
“Who is she talking about?” Hex asked. His confident demeanor from earlier had shifted to a weird display of unease. He didn’t stand up straight anymore. He had his shoulders hunched forward. Defeat creased near the worried lines around his eyes.
“I don’t know.” My fingers shook. I hugged myself, protecting my body from the cold around me and looked at her. “Who are you and why did your eyes do that strange thing?”
Alvarez rubbed his whole face with his big hand. “Grandma, why don’t you go back to your cottage and rest? I’ll take care of this.”
She raised her hands in the air. “You take care of everything when I’m right here to help.”
“I don’t need your help. I have everything under control.”
“You have nothing but black shadows and gray clouds all over this big house. Bad things are in these walls! All of my fruit and vegetables rotted just like that. Yesterday, there was a good crop coming. Now it’s all gray and brown. Everything is dead. The earth has responded. The gods are angry.”
He sighed. “Grandma—”
“No one listens to me. I said girls would die and here they go—”
Dead girls? There was a corpse in that body bag!
“First this girl and now my garden is gone. This is a sign that more dead ones will come—”
“That’s enough.” Alvarez’s voice rose, but it seemed forced as if he’d used it with his grandma as a final option. “You’re scaring Elle and stressing out Hex. You and I can talk about this later.”
She formed her lips into a straight line and placed her closed fists on her hips. “And will you give me the hearts to break the curse?”
Did she say hearts? Did she freaking say curse!?
I edged back.
“Yes, but only if you stop talking and go back to your cottage.” Alvarez glared at her.
She shifted her scowl to a pleased smile. “You’re a good boy, such a good one.” She faced me. “Nice meeting you, Elle. We’ll talk about the bad man later. I have things for men like him, stuff to protect you. I can’t use the herbs in my garden anymore. They’re tainted with evil now but—”
Alvarez cleared his throat. “Please, Grandma.”
“Again nice to meet you, Elle.” She waved goodbye.
I could only bob my head as she left. When their grandma had shut the door and her cheery whistles sounded beyond the walls, Alvarez directed his gaze to me. “Who is this bad guy that she’s talking about?”
“What the hell happened to her eyes and why was there someone screaming outside? And what does she mean vegetables are evil?”
“Answer my question first.”
“No. I don’t think so.” I held up a finger at him. “She said something about dead girls, hearts, and a curse. And that stuff is evil. What is she talking about?”
“My grandma is eccentric.”
“Her eyes did weird things. That’s more than eccentric. It’s scary.”
“It’s a trick she learned to do when she was a child. It helped her seem more authentic when she would tell fortunes at carnivals and fairs.”
“Bullshit,” I blurted. “Her hands were cold and everything seemed weird. I’ve never felt that way before. It was creepy.”
Alvarez raised his hand to stop my rant. “You’re avoiding my questions while I’ve answered yours.”
“Answered mine?” I touched my chest. “Why are there dead girls? Was that what the EMT was pushing out to the ambulance today? Am I in danger or something?”
Hex snapped his attention to his brother. “What is she talking about?”