Demon Hunting with a Sexy Ex by Lexi George (5)

Cassie leaned against the door, her insides churning. Duncan had seemed so . . . shattered, and she’d done that to him. She straightened, shaking off her remorse. Duncan had no claim on her. There was nothing between them but memories.

Then why did she feel like a jerk?

A noise outside drew her to the window. With a negligent flick of one hand, Duncan erased the deep ruts he’d made in her driveway. He gestured again, and the dead werewolf floated over and settled into the back of the truck, head and all. Duncan’s movements were mechanical, his sculpted features frozen in a hard, unyielding mask. He motioned a third time, and Cassie’s truck cover soared out of the shed and across the yard. Before she had time to wonder how he knew where she stored it, the cover settled onto the bed of the truck and closed tight, protecting the carcass from scavengers.

Task accomplished, Duncan turned toward the house. He stood there for a long moment, gazing at the cottage with a hard, empty expression, and then he was gone.

Cassie stared at the spot where he’d been standing. He had that disappearing act down pat. He’d done the same thing, years ago—dissolved into the ether—leaving her to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.

“Good riddance,” she muttered, but the words rang hollow.

Her eyes burned. Enough, she thought. You don’t get any more of me, Duncan Dalvahni. Not another drop. Not another wasted thought or emotion.

She spun away from the window and smacked into Verbena.

“Umph,” Verbena grunted, stumbling slightly. “Sorry about that. Where’s Mr. Duncan?”

“Gone.”

“Gone?” Verbena’s eyes widened in alarm. “Back across the river? I need to catch him.”

She turned and darted away.

Cassie caught her before she reached the door. “Wait, Verbena. I don’t think he’s across the river. He’s a demon hunter. There’s no telling where he’s gone or if he’ll be back. In the meantime, you’re welcome to stay with me.”

Good Lord, why was she offering this strange girl a place to stay? She didn’t know Verbena, and the girl wasn’t her problem.

“Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but I don’t know you,” Verbena said, echoing Cassie’s thoughts. “And I done caused you enough trouble fer one day. ’Sides, I—”

She paused, her face reddening.

“Feel safer with Duncan because he’s a demon hunter? You needn’t be afraid. I can protect you.”

If her magic cooperated, Cassie silently amended. If she could get her shields up and running again.

If she could figure out why her powers had fizzled in the first place.

“Besides,” Cassie continued, squashing her reluctance and doubts, “Duncan doesn’t have a place to stay.”

“Yes, he do. Got hisself a tent across the river, and he’s building himself a house.”

“A tent?” Cassie gave a mock shudder. “That settles it. Why rough it when you can stay under a roof?”

Verbena’s lip curled. “A tent ain’t roughin’ it. It’s a whole heap better ’n sleeping with the dawgs, I can tell you like a friend. ’Sides, Mr. Duncan needs me.”

“Duncan is Dalvahni. Demon hunters don’t ‘need’ anybody.”

“You wrong. He ain’t like that.” Verbena’s eyes sparkled with indignation. “I heard what you said to him. Heard it plum inside the house. Talking to him like . . . like I don’t know what. He loves you. Something terrible. And you throwed it in his face like yesterday’s scraps ’cause he done hurt your feelings when Jesus was in short pants. Something he’s begged your pardon for more ’n once. Heard that, too.”

She turned away, shoulders heaving.

Cassie stared at the girl’s rigid form in astonishment. This child, this backwoods ragamuffin, dared to reprimand her?

“That’s between me and Duncan,” Cassie said, holding on to her temper by a thread. “You don’t know anything about it.”

Verbena spun around. “I knowed I seen his face when you tole him to scat. He was broke up.”

“He’ll live. The Dalvahni are indestructible.”

“Not Mr. Duncan. He’s different.”

“Different how?” Cassie heard herself ask.

“W-e-l-l,” Verbena said, her face creased in thought. “He ain’t stony-faced, for one thing, like Mr. Conall.”

Cassie remembered the ever-present laughter that lurked in Duncan’s warm eyes, and had to admit this was true.

Verbena worried her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t ’uv said that. About Mr. Conall, I mean. He ain’t never been nothing but nice to me, but he . . .” She flushed. “He makes a body nervesome, if you knows what I mean.”

Cassie had to admit that she did. The captain of the Dalvahni was intense and intimidating as hell. He gave everyone but his wife, Beck, the cold treatment.

“Mr. Duncan ain’t like that,” Verbena said, rushing on. “He’s comfortable. Treats me like a person, and his eyes smile at you when he talks. He’s good with animals, too.” She stuck out her chin. “Animals can tell about a person. And he’s easy on the eyeballs, same as all them Dalvahni fellers.”

“A regular paragon.” Despite her annoyance, Cassie was amused by the girl’s fierce defense of Duncan. Rather like a field mouse championing a lion. “I do believe you’re in love with him.”

Verbena gave her a look of purest astonishment. “Me, in love with Mr. Duncan? Might as well fall in love with that river out there. It’s powerful and strong, and purty to look at, but it don’t stop fer no one. Roll right over you and keep on going.”

Cassie laughed. “Verbena, I do believe you are a philosopher.”

Verbena turned red. “You funning me. I know I ain’t book smart.” She ducked her head. “Charlie wouldn’t let me go to school, but I can read. My mama learned me ’fore she died.”

“I promise you, I’m not making fun of you. There are plenty of book-smart people in the world without walking-around sense.”

“Charlie didn’t hold with books. Said they make folks uppity. Give ’em ideas.”

“I have shelves of books, and you are welcome to read them all.” Cassie gave her a coaxing smile. “Don’t be angry with me. I think Duncan is very lucky to have a friend like you.”

Verbena’s eyes widened. “Lord, miss. The likes of me can’t be friends with the likes of Mr. D. Demon hunters is outta my league. Couldn’t stand by and let you say them things about him when they ain’t true, that’s all.”

“Stay with me,” Cassie coaxed. “I promise not to say anything rude about Duncan, if it kills me.”

“W-e-l-l,” Verbena said again, wavering. “I reckon I could stay one night.”

“Good. You shower while I scrape up something for us to eat. In the morning, we’ll put our heads together and decide what to do. Things always seem better in the daylight.”

Verbena brushed at her grimy jeans. “I’d love a wash. Ain’t had a bath in days, but what am I gon’ wear? Left the restaurant in such a hurry I didn’t have time to git my duds.”

“You can borrow something of mine to sleep in,” Cassie said. “I’ll throw your things in the washer, and they’ll be clean when you get up.”

Verbena gave her a piercing look. “Why are you doing this? I ain’t nothing to you.”

Excellent question, and one Cassie couldn’t answer herself.

“Joby Ray,” Cassie confided. “I don’t like him worth a damn.”

“Well, all righty then.” Verbena gave her a shy grin. “Reckon we got us something in common, ’cause I don’t like him worth a damn neither.”

An hour later, they were seated in the kitchen at Cassie’s worn farmhouse table having supper. Verbena had bathed and donned one of Cassie’s old nightgowns. The sun had gone down and darkness pressed around the house like a woolen blanket. Outside, the bugs and the frogs were having a hoedown throw down, their buzzy noise-making audible through the closed windows. The temperature had dropped, but it was muggy and hot. Cassie had been the first in Behr County to install air-conditioning in her home, and that had been back in the 1940s. Lord, how people had talked, not that she’d given a fig. Air-conditioning was one of the marvels of the modern world and a flat-out necessity in Alabama, as far as she was concerned, unless you enjoyed waking up in a pool of your own sweat.

Verbena pushed back her plate with a little moan of satisfaction. “That was fine, miss, mighty fine.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“Liked” was an understatement. Verbena had downed an astonishing amount of food for one so slender and ethereal looking. Did she have a hollow leg?

“Been living on apples and blackberries the past week,” Verbena said, as though guessing her thoughts. “Whadda you call them little brown cakes again?”

“Salmon croquettes.” Cassie wiped her mouth with her napkin and set her fork down. The food on her plate was largely untouched. “You’ve never had them?”

Verbena shook her head. “Fancy fish out of a can? No, ma’am.”

Cassie smiled at this description of her simple supper. “Canned salmon is hardly fancy.”

“Reckon that depends,” Verbena said, considering this. “Skinners grow what they eat, and trap and shoot the rest. Charlie didn’t hold with store-bought food, ’cepting for dry goods—meal, sugar, salt, and flour. Them kinda things. Wouldn’t a’ wasted good vittles on me, anyway. On account of me being a dud, you know.”

“They were wrong about that, now weren’t they?” Cassie kept her tone light, but the picture Verbena painted of her life made her angry. The Skinners should be whipped like rented mules. “I’m glad you enjoyed your supper. It’s not much fun cooking for one.”

Verbena gave her a curious look. “You ain’t never been married, miss?”

Cassie paused in the act of raising her glass. “No.”

“A fine beautiful lady like you? How come?” Verbena reddened when she saw Cassie’s expression. “’Scuse me. None o’ my business.”

Cassie unbent at the girl’s obvious chagrin. Taking a sip of tea, she considered Verbena. “How old are you, child?”

Verbena bolted upright in her chair. “Ain’t a child. Be twenty years old in a few months.”

“Twenty.” Cassie bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Practically a relic.”

She’d been twenty when she and Duncan had met and fallen in love, a lifetime ago. Several lifetimes ago. In the various incarnations she’d adopted to disguise the fact that she didn’t age, she’d been Cassie, Sibley, Chloe, Emma, and Maura, coming full circle to Cassie again.

“My mama was fifteen when she married Old Charlie,” Verbena said. “And you can’t be much older ’n me.” She appraised Cassie. “What are you, twenty-three? Twenty-four?”

“A few years older than that.” Almost two centuries older. Lord, this child made her feel ancient. Rising, Cassie gathered the dishes. “Would you care for dessert? There are cookies in the pantry, and ice cream in the freezer.”

Verbena stretched and yawned. Her blond hair was damp from her shower, and she looked very young in Cassie’s borrowed nightclothes.

“Naw,” she said. “I eat another bite, I’ll pop.”

“You’re worn out,” Cassie said. “Go to bed. I’ll clean up the kitchen.”

“And leave you to do the washing up when you done stood on yo’ feet, and cooked and fed me?” Verbena jumped to her feet. “I don’t think so. My mama would climb outta her grave and kick me to death if’n I was to be so sorry.”

Cassie chuckled. “Guess you’d better help, then.”

Between the two of them, the kitchen was soon spick-and-span. The odor of fried fish lingered, but a simple air cleansing spell performed by Cassie—to Verbena’s delight and wonder—soon remedied that.

Simple I can still manage, Cassie thought, with a wry smile.

There were two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Cassie showed Verbena to the room farthest from the stairs, made sure she had everything she needed, and went back downstairs to make a phone call. Lordy, she dreaded this.

Hurrying to the landline in the hall—cell phones were useless in Hannah; the crater interfered with reception—she dialed Zeb’s number from memory. To her dismay, she got a recording: Number no longer in service. She stood there in the hall, receiver in hand, and thought hard. After a moment’s reflection, she dialed another number. This time, to her relief, she got an answer.

“Yo,” a gruff voice said at the other end of the line.

“Toby? Cassie. Listen, I need your help. Can you get a message to Zeb Randall through the kith wire?”

“Werewolves ain’t kith.”

“I know, but I can’t call him. Zeb’s phone is out of order.”

“Ain’t out of order. Zeb yanked the damn thing out of the wall. Paranoid. Thought the Lyalls were listening in. Won’t let anyone else in the pack have a phone, either. Zeb’s gone plumb loco.”

Cassie gripped the receiver. “Oh, dear. I had no idea.”

“Don’t see how you could, seeing as how you stay cooped up on the river. You need to get out more, baby doll.”

Cassie grinned into the phone. She and Toby went way back. They’d first met in France during World War I, when Cassie had been a volunteer with the Red Cross—wrapping bandages and emptying bed pans, mostly, because she wasn’t a trained nurse. Toby, fighting alongside other Alabamians in the 167th Regiment, had been wounded at the Battle of Croix Rouge. He’d been brought to a field hospital, and that’s where they’d met.

Gazing into Toby’s mismatched eyes—one was purple, the other a glowing topaz—Cassie had known at once that he was like her.

“You’re from Behr County,” she’d said, without thinking.

Toby had regarded her with familiar kith wariness. Trust no norm, their code cautioned, and with good reason. If the norms knew of their existence, they’d be hounded and persecuted. Their safety, their very lives, depended on secrecy.

“What of it?” he’d said. “Lot of Bama boys here.”

“I’m from Behr County, too,” Cassie had said, raising her voice for the benefit of anyone listening. “Thought you might have news from home.”

Glancing around the ward to make sure no one was watching, she’d drawn a shining symbol in the air with the end of her finger. The swirling design glowed bright for a moment, then faded.

“You can trust me,” she’d whispered. “I’m like you.”

Toby leaned closer and inhaled, then sat back, his expression satisfied. “You’re kith, all right.” He’d tapped the end of his nose. “This old snoot can smell power, and you know the mark. Who are your folks?”

“Don’t have any,” Cassie had said, her mind shying away from the image of the graves beneath the tree.

“That right?” Toby had drawled. “Me, neither. Reckon that means we’ll have to look out for one another.”

They’d been friends ever since.

“Tell you what,” Toby said into the phone, recalling Cassie’s thoughts to the present. “Deliver the message myself. Whadda I tell him?”

What, indeed?

“Tell him . . .” Cassie took a deep breath and exhaled. “Tell him his nephew Mac has met with an accident.”

There was silence on the line, and then, “What kind of accident?”

“It’s bad, Toby. Mac is dead. Zeb needs to come to my place.”

“You in trouble? Need me to ride out?”

Tears filled Cassie’s eyes at the concern in the shifter’s voice. “Thanks.” To her annoyance, her voice shook, and she cleared her throat. “I’ll be okay. Get word to Zeb for me, okay? And try to keep this quiet. This needs to be between me and the alpha.”

“You got it.”

The phone went dead and Cassie wandered out onto the porch, too restless to sleep. It was dark as the devil’s armpit, but lights twinkled in the trees across the river, and the sound of hammering and the rasp of handsaws continued. At least they didn’t use power tools, but what kind of construction workers stayed on the job into the wee hours?

The kind that were being paid exorbitant wages, Cassie thought darkly. No telling what Duncan was paying them.

Taking a seat in her favorite rocker, Cassie ignored the sounds across the river, determined to soak in the night air. Silvery streaks of moonlight glinted on the dark water that rolled past, slow and quiet, and sloshed against the banks. The river’s lazy demeanor was deceptive. Downstream, Cassie knew, the Devil River grew dangerous and unpredictable.

Like Duncan, she thought, remembering that Verbena had compared him to a river. Clearly, he expected me to remain faithful to his memory, Cassie thought. He’s got a nerve. Dollars to doughnuts he’s been with other women since we parted ways.

Not women, exactly, she amended mentally. According to Duncan, the Dalvahni were bound by a code of conduct, and one of their rules required them to undergo frequent “sessions” at some place Duncan had called the House of Pleasure. Thralls, Cassie had learned upon asking, were concubines. Supernaturally gorgeous concubines, who subsisted on regular and vigorous intercourse with the Dalvahni.

“They are succubi who require emotion as sustenance,” Duncan had explained. “According to the Directive, an unemotional warrior is an efficient warrior. Through sexual congress, there is an . . . er . . . exchange. We empty ourselves of emotion, and the thralls receive necessary sustenance. The relationship is mutually beneficial, as you can see.”

“Clear as day,” Cassie had said, incensed. “You Dalvahni boys got yourselves a bunch of sex slaves. Shame on you.”

“Not slaves.” Duncan looked affronted. “Thralls are willing—nay, delighted to accommodate us, for without emotion, they die. They are happy with their lot, I assure you.”

“Accommodate—what a lovely way to put it,” Cassie said in a dangerous tone. “Are they allowed to leave?”

“They do not wish to leave. The House of Pleasure is their home.”

“So, no.” Cassie pressed her lips together. “They’re sex slaves. You can dress a pig up in Sunday clothes all day long, but it’s still a pig.”

“What, pray, have swine to do with it?”

“You’re a clever fellow. You figure it out.”

That had ended the discussion, but Cassie had no doubt the thralls were a service Duncan had continued to employ. A dirty job, but then, someone had to do it. It was his duty, after all.

“So, while he’s off in some intergalactic whorehouse having himself a good old time, I’m supposed to batten down the hatches?” Cassie thrust the question into the darkness. “I don’t think so. How medieval.”

But that was Duncan, medieval down to his leather hauberk. She’d been right to be blunt with him. Anything less than the truth would’ve bounced off his thick skull.

You weren’t entirely truthful, a small voice reproved. You didn’t tell him why you broke it off with Zeb. You were attracted to the Randall alpha. You liked him. You liked him a lot. You had every intention of bedding him . . . until Duncan showed up.

“Duncan, Duncan, Duncan,” Cassie cried. “Forget about Duncan. I’ve got other things to worry about. Like the dead werewolf that’s Saran-wrapped in the back of my truck. Oh, yeah, and my talent’s on the blink.”

I noticed. The inner voice was smug. If memory serves, your talent became unreliable around the same time you-know-who showed up.

“The trouble with my talent has nothing to do with Duncan. I’m going through a bad patch. That’s all.”

“I’m going to do my best to talk her into staying here,” Cassie said. “She can’t sleep in a tent with Duncan, for goodness’ sake.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Am not.”

Cassie jumped up so hard the rocking chair bammed against the wall.

“I said shut up,” she yelled, startling the frogs into silence.

I’ve had my say, the voice replied, unruffled. But be warned. I’m here and fully loaded with twinges of remorse. It’s high time you grew up and stopped being such a crybaby. Oh, yeah—and apologize to Duncan.

“Apologize to—I wouldn’t hold your breath, if I were you.”

“Squeams?”

Oh, God, it was official. She was losing it. Abandoning the porch, Cassie fled to her room.