Rosemary and Rue

The silence that followed my outburst was followed by a familiar, if muffled sound: Siamese voices, raised in angry protest at their mistreatment by the world. “Girls?” The yowls led me to the front door. I opened it, and the cats came racing inside, ears flat against their heads, eyes wide and wild. I stared at them. “Jeez, girls. Were you out there all night? You know there’s a reason you’re not allowed to go outside!”


Cagney looked up at me, ears still flat, and yowled again. I sighed. “Right. You got out when Devin brought me inside.” Lacey added her voice to the choir, both of them beginning to twine around my ankles. I don’t normally mind them being friendly. I also don’t normally have a hole in my thigh and a case of iron poisoning threatening to dump me on my ass. “Yes, I know,” I said, stepping over them on my way to the kitchen. “You nearly froze to death out there, you haven’t been fed since the fall of Rome, and I’m evil. How about you let me get to the kitchen without breaking my neck?”

The cats seemed unimpressed by this offer and complained all the way into the kitchen, stopping only after their bowl was full of mashed-up artificial fish. The last of Devin’s yellow gunk was caked on the inside of my coffeepot. I scraped it thickly into my mug and shoved the mug into the microwave, asking, “You two need anything else?” The cats didn’t answer.

I rinsed the coffeepot and filled it with water, studying my reflection in the toaster. I looked like hell. My skin was pale, the skin around my eyes looked bruised, my neck was livid with scrapes and bruises from its encounter with the seat belt, and somehow I still looked better than I had the night before. Sleep and a hefty dose of several healing potions will do that for a girl.

Sleep, healing potions, and a little company. I half smiled as I filled the coffee machine, setting it to percolate. Maybe it was wrong of me to go looking for a silver lining in the current stupid mess, but if there was one, it was in the bridges I was starting to rebuild. Sylvester had missed me. Shadowed Hills was willing to welcome me. And Devin . . .

I touched the side of my neck, remembering the touch of Devin’s lips. Devin still cared. In his own screwed-up way, he’d never stopped.

The ding of the microwave snapped me back to the present. Withdrawing the mug, I sipped the gingerbread-scented goo and waited for the coffee to finish. The iron in my blood still had me weak and befuddled, but time and not getting myself killed would take care of that. In the meantime, at least the stuff Devin had left me was helping to keep me on my feet.

The taste of roses tried to rise in my throat, seeming thinner and weaker than before. I wasn’t the only one being slowed down by the iron poisoning. I shoved it down as hard as I could and took another large gulp of Devin’s gingerbread slime before topping off my mug with coffee. No matter how much I wanted to stand around and dwell on things, the fact remained that I was on a very real deadline, and the trail to Evening’s killers was having more and more time to get cold.

The gingerbread slime was substantially easier to stomach when mixed with coffee. I topped the mug off again, adding six spoonfuls of sugar before heading for the hall. The day looked pretty simple, really. I’d call Sylvester and let him know that I was still alive. Then, when Devin’s kids showed up, I’d head for Home, and I’d tell him everything. The hope chest, the key, the curse Evening slapped on me before she died, everything. He had the pieces I was missing about the way things had changed in the years I missed, and between the two of us, we might just have enough to end this whole damn mess.

The mixture of coffee and healing potion was sweet and sharp on my tongue, and it tasted like surviving to see tomorrow. I was reaching for the telephone when the doorbell rang.

I tensed, turning to stare at the door before slowly, grudgingly relaxing. Devin told me he’d be sending his kids in the morning. It was past noon; I should’ve been expecting them. Tightening the knot on my robe, I walked over and opened the door.