The hems of her pajamas trailed on the ground behind her, the white fabric grimy and stained red. She twisted around to glare at them. “Get them off my land!” she demanded.
Jonah watched Deborah. “Where did you hear that, Deborah?” he prodded. “That people were asking questions…?”
She turned to give him an impatient look, opened her mouth to answer, and faltered. A vacant expression softened her face, and she looked baffled for a second, mouth slightly open and eyebrows raised.
“I… I don’t…” she trailed off, coughed softly, and visibly shifted back into her previous confident persona. “I don’t answer to you.”
Jonah stepped back onto Shiloh’s foot. It didn’t make much impact through the heavy biker boots, but Shiloh registered the cue anyhow. He nudged Jonah aside and stepped forward.
“Maybe it was the same place that I heard it,” he said. That was, actually, technically true. “And you do answer to me.”
Deborah snorted dismissively. “Do you even have a bank account?” she asked. “Because the only people I answer to pay my bills. Now—”
“I speak for the Crow,” Shiloh said.
“His daughter speaks for the Crow.”
That made Shiloh grimace, the muscles in his jaw tight under the gilt-stubbled skin. There hadn’t seemed to be any tension between the two siblings when they were together; it was just in interactions with other people. Jonah made a mental note of that. If he’d tied himself to the Crossroad Crows for six favors, he needed to know the lay of the land.
“She ain’t here,” Shiloh said. “So either listen to me, or you can tell my sister you think you’re too good to speak to me. Two enemies for the price of one. Three, if my dad isn’t satisfied with your answers.”
Deborah’s nostrils flared, and her upper lip curled in a brief, angry sneer that she turned into a tight, professional smile.
“If the Crows have concerns about the farm’s security measures, we can address that at a more appropriate time,” she said.
“Yeah, I want to address it now,” Shiloh said. “Seeing as I just had to catch two intruders for you.”
She gave him an irritated look. “They stole some apples,” she said, her voice sodden with contempt. “And they stink of booze. Hardly here to break into a vault, are they?”
Something was off. None of Deborah’s reactions had played out the way Jonah expected. She knew there was a hag out there in the dark, something she’d been terrified of a few hours ago, but she didn’t seem concerned. There was no urgency.
“If I was you,” Jonah said to Shiloh, “I’d want to check that she still has my stuff. Seems like the lady here has something to hide.”
Deborah sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “There’s never been a question about the farm’s integrity. If the Crows want to—”
“I want to see the vault,” Shiloh said. “Tonight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There are procedures that have to be followed to—”
“They could have been a distraction,” Shiloh pointed out as he jerked his thumb back at Jonah. “Keep you busy while someone else raids the vault. Put my mind at ease, Ms. Slater, or I’ll make a few stops on my way home. Make everyone else uneasy.”
There was a long, annoyed pause, and then Deborah sighed in frustration.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll show you the vault, but you can’t go in or remove anything. Understood?”
Shiloh nodded and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “They come with us,” he said. “Whether they were involved or not, they need their mouths hexed shut about tonight.”
“Them?” Deborah said. She laughed as she turned her back. “If they’ve been eating our apples, Mr. Crow, they won’t be talking to anyone about tonight.”
Gran had never talked about the farm.
She’d never talked about Jerusalem much either. As far as Jonah was aware, she’d only left Babylon once, and that had been on a church trip to Vegas. She’d come back unimpressed, with a purse full of money and someone’s eye in a bottle of bourbon.
None of them had been able to work out how she’d gotten the eye through the neck of the bottle. She’d refused to tell them, too.
Whenever you feel smart?she’d tell them.Just look at that bottle and remember. I taught you everything you know, and it’s not even half of what I can do.
Grandad had drunk it one night, though. So after that, it hadn’t been such a good prop.
