Which would mean taking a slave. The thought jerked me out of my meditative trance and I banished it. “No way,” I whispered. “No freaking way.” If temptation was real, then the idea of slavery was a temptation direct from the heart of a demon. Almost all of the tribal peoples of the Americas had been sold into slavery, had toiled and died in chains, for centuries before the first African slave had been brought over. Like our African brothers and sisters, we knew slavery.
Silent, abashed, and more than a little ashamed, I stood and went inside and closed the door behind me.
? ? ?
Molly and Evan had bound the skull, keeping it from being used by anything magical—including me, I assumed—and Mol told me that the skull was much like an ensorcelled teapot she had seen recently, one that moved along a timeline following a vampire. Which just sounded weird, but most things magical were weird. I hoped that with the skull bound, the arcenciel would stay away.
Angie was put to bed and the lights in the house went mostly dark before I smelled Molly outside my room. She had showered off the stinky perfume and the sweat, but her own Molly scent, augmented by the pheromones of pregnancy, flowed under the door as she stood outside waiting for something. I knew she could see the light under the door, so she was standing there, indecisive. Uncertain. I could have gotten up and made her decision for her, but I left it to her. If Molly wanted to explain everything, she could. Or not. Finally she walked away and I went back to my reading on my tablet, going over Alex’s research on arcenciels and other things paranormal.
Half an hour later Molly came to the door again, and this time she knocked. I smelled some of her herbal tea, the stuff she drank when she was pregnant, along with some herbal spice tea, the stuff I sometimes drank at night. Most drugs have no effect on skinwalkers, but caffeine was one that worked on me, and quite well, so real tea at night was something I usually avoided.
“Come in, Mol,” I said.
The door opened and Molly entered. Mol usually slept in a nightgown like Angie, but with the guys in the house, she was wearing chaste flannels. Pink. Her red hair was curled in a disordered mop all over her head. Her feet were in pink slippers with rubberized soles. And she wore a serious face, devoid of makeup.
I patted the bed. I was sitting up, the sheets folded down, pillows plumped against the wall to make a chair. I was wearing loose, thin pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, all in charcoal tones, so that if I needed to move through the house in the dark, I wouldn’t stand out from the shadows. It’s sad, the things that people like me think when we make the smallest decision. Death, danger, dismembering, threat, menace, dark magic, gunshots, bombs, and peril. All while buying pj’s.
Molly placed the tray beside me on the bed and crawled up on the other side, pulling the sheets over her legs. I smiled at her and accepted the mug of tea, which had a dollop of Cool Whip on it.
“I made a mess of things,” she said.
I didn’t reply, just watched her over the mug’s rim as I sipped, the ceramic warm on my fingers.
“I’ve made a mess of a lot of things over the years.”
I still didn’t reply, and she frowned.
“I made a mess when I blamed you for my babies being taken by the Damours. I made a mess when I let fear drive me away from earth magic to death magic. I made a mess when I didn’t trust you to do the right thing. All the time. Every time. Always.” Tears gathered in her eyes. Pregnancy was making her weepy. “You always do the right thing, even when it comes back and bites you in the ass. And I’m sorry for biting you in the ass.”
I smiled and took a cookie off the tray. They were Eli’s cookies, kept for special occasions, and no one had permission to open the bag. They were his to disperse as he saw fit. Like prizes. He had found them at a local candy store—though Alex and I had never figured out which one—and bought them by the dozen, usually taking them to Natchez to his honey bun, Sylvia, the county sheriff. More rarely he’d bring a bag home and dole them out as treasures. Caramel and white chocolate and macadamia nuts and walnuts all in a gooey soft cookie, with a single dark chocolate button in the center, melted flat and soaked into the dough as it cooked. I ate, and didn’t tell Molly that the cookies were “hands-off,” which was evil, but comfort food was always nice.
Molly scowled. “Are you gonna forgive me?”
I shrugged and pushed a loose crumb of cookie from my lip into my mouth. “Did that a long time ago. Just like you forgave me for not keeping your kids safe from the Damours.”
“That wasn’t your doing or your fault. It was their fault. I had no reason to be mad at you. Neither did Big Evan.”
“Where their children are concerned, parents aren’t exactly logical. I knew that going into our friendship.”