He’d wanted that little orange badly enough to snatch it secretly, while—if she remembered correctly—distracting her with some stupid software question, and then he’d transferred the purloined soap from outfit to outfit every time he’d changed clothing.
He prized it enough to store within his mother’s gorgeous pomander. Which she’d carried with her everywhere. Which he now carried withhimeverywhere.
“I think I can afford your fee,” he said dryly.
“Calm down, Scrooge McDuck. I already know you bathe in gold ducats.” When Edie glanced up, he wasn’t looking at the soap. He was looking at her. “Does the scent remind you of your mother?”
Edie liked the thought of that, of something she’d created bringing him comfort. A product of her own hands helping him remember the parent who’d loved him and whom he’d loved back with such fierce, bloody devotion.
“It reminds me of both of you.” His tone strongly implied she was a moron, even as his eyes crinkled in an affectionate smile. “Obviously.”
Oh. Oh, that was even better.
The melting sensation in her belly…that couldn’t be healthy, right?
Slowly, the curve of his mouth flattened. “She didn’t bring itto the festival that night. The suspension ring had detached, so she’d left both pieces with the silversmith. By the time I remembered to reclaim her pomander, the charm inside was gone. But as I said, the witch’s concoction had orange. Clove.”
“Like the soap.”
He inclined his head, then surrounded her hand with his, closing her fingers around the sphere as tightly as possible. “I want you to carry this today, Edie.”
Poised to argue—because like hells she’d be carrying his lucky pomander while he fought fuckingzombies—she opened her mouth, only to shut it again when a firm knock rattled the bathroom door.
Kip called out, “I don’t want to know what you two are doing in there—”
“I want to know!” Lorraine sounded wide-awake. Also very curious.
“—but your time is up. Cease canoodling at once, mini-vamp! Forthwith!”
Max sighed, kissed Edie on the forehead, and spoke to the door. “This is because I didn’t let you have the couch, isn’t it?”
“Sure is!” Kip loudly hummed theJeopardy!theme music until they’d dressed and left the bathroom. “Did you appreciate the old-timey language? You know, since you probably, like, hung out with Plato or whoever?”
Max grunted.
“I appreciated it, Kip.” Edie smiled at him, patting the coveralls pocket where she’d tucked the pomander. For now. “Did you sleep okay?”
His lower lip poked out a tad. “No. And I think we both know why.”
With deeply sardonic courtesy, Max bowed and swept a hand toward the empty bathroom. “Happy now?”
“Yep.” The troll strolled inside, and his grin lit the dim hallway. “Revenge is a dish best served whilst coldly cockblocking vampires.”
The sound Max made in response to that wasn’t quite a growl. But it wasn’t quite not a growl either.
Edie patted his arm consolingly. “Today’s going to be super fun. I can already tell.”
That time, it was definitely a growl.
25
As soon as night fell, Sabrina set off a few flares, and Edie lit the house two doors down from hers on fire.
Biting her lip, she watched flames lick up the sides of Mr. and Mrs. Buchwald’s crumbling wood-sided rancher and tried not to question the group’s plan. After decades of closeting herself indoors after sunset, this kind of exposure jangled her nerves. But as the more strategically minded among them had argued the previous evening, they needed to attract every single zombie to their various boobytraps, and during daylight hours there was simply no way to do so without also drawing the attention of outsiders. The flicker of flames in darkness, though—from a distance, it would be silent yet unmissable to the creatures. An inescapable lure.
The sirens hadn’t yet sounded, so the group assumed that the zombie pack still lingered within the Containment Zone and fae trickery had left government officials still unaware of the perilous situation. So far, so good. But this was a calculated risk, nevertheless, without much room for error. The inferno had to be large enough, the flares high enough, to capture the creatures’attention and lure them back toward the compound—but not large or high enough to be seen above Wall Four, thus bringing the authorities or other unwanted visitors to the Zone.
The outermost Containment Zone wall was the tallest by far, and hopefully darkness would obscure the smoke already billowing thickly into the sky, but…yeah. A lot could go wrong. Even if everything ostensibly wentrightand the entire pack of zombies headed their way en masse without inviting external scrutiny to what was happening on Cloverleaf Drive.
