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Menolly squeezed past me and threw herself into Nerissa’s arms, planting a huge kiss on her. Nerissa breathed in a contented sigh, and when she looked over at me, the glow in her eyes was almost blinding.
“Come on, dinner’s on the table and we need to talk over plans.” I motioned for them to follow me back into the kitchen.
As we entered the kitchen, I saw that everything had been laid out, along with plates and forks and knives.
Nerissa leaned over to sniff one of the buckets of chicken. She clapped her hands and licked her lips. “Chicken! So,” she added, looking up at me, “was it rough out there tonight?”
“Well, it wasn’t a picnic. It was easier than this morning, but it was still a mess. Bone-walkers everywhere, yanked out of their graves. My only hope is that the cemetery was so old that whatever raised them wasn’t able to find any spirits around the graveyard to suck up through their astral straw. And now, I’m wondering if the ghosts who were…well…ghostnapped…weren’t used in the ritual to gate the eggs over here.”
Shade returned from the bathroom off the utility room. He sat at the table and motioned for Delilah to sit next to him. “It is possible—the amount of psychic energy it took to bring those eggs over here had to be tremendous. While Gulakah’s perfectly capable of gating them over from the Netherworld, it might make it easier on him if he uses the extra energy from harvesting ghosts.”
Trillian was standing at the counter, filling a pitcher with lemonade. He motioned for me to join him, and when I did, he handed me a small pouch. I opened it and a silver medallion fell into my hand.
A round coin, the size of a quarter with a hole in it for feeding a cord through, it looked similar to the one I’d worn so many years back, but there were subtle differences. It was heavier, and stronger. I held it in one palm and closed my other hand over it, trying to read the energy signature, but—even though I was a seasoned witch—it was hard for me to detect the magic within the charm. And that was a very good thing. It meant it would be harder for others to sense that it was magical as well.
I held it up to the light. “You say this will last until I’m attacked?”
“Yes, it’s stronger than the ones we had back when we were chasing Roche. This will last longer.”
Menolly swiveled around from where she was carrying the pies over to the table. “You were chasing Roche? Are you saying you belonged to the OIA?”
Trillian stared at her for a moment, and then he looked at me. “Ask your sister.”
“I guess the time’s come to tell them,” I said.
“Tell us what?” Menolly looked confused.
At first, we’d kept it quiet that Trillian had saved my ass. Lathe, my boss, was looking for any reason to get rid of me because I refused to give him a blowjob or sleep with him. He’d done everything he could to make my life miserable. I’d met Trillian, fallen hard for him, and he’d joined forces with me to bring in Roche, a serial killer I was hunting.
I’d wanted to tell my sisters, but Trillian told me to keep it a secret. He wanted them to like him for who he was, not because he’d helped save my career. I’d felt odd about it, but agreed, and shortly after, with Menolly getting turned into a vampire, the issue faded into the background and we never had gotten around to telling them what really happened.
I turned around. “Okay, you remember the case I was on? The one that scared the fuck out of me because Roche was a demented serial killer and Lathe wouldn’t assign anybody to help me?”
They nodded. Smoky and Morio were staring at me now, too.
“That’s when I met Trillian. And he…the truth is that without Trillian, Roche would have killed me—that is, if I could have tracked him down in the first place. Trillian not only helped me catch him, but he saved my life doing so. And then, he refused to let me tell anybody because he didn’t want Lathe to use it against me.”
Delilah and Menolly glanced at each other. Delilah started to blush. They’d treated Trillian like dirt when we were first together, and it had driven a wedge between the three of us for a while.
“Well, now I feel like a crap bucket,” Menolly said. She set down the pies and walked over to Trillian, where she gave his ponytail a gentle yank. “We gave you a lot of shit and we’re sorry. But you have to admit, you can be an asshole sometimes.”
Trillian leaned back and folded his arms as he leaned back against the counter. “You and Delilah did give me a lot of shit. And of course I’m an arrogant ass, but you have to admit, I have the goods to back it up.” He smiled, and then Menolly smiled, and everybody took a deep breath and started moving again.
Menolly flicked his nose. “Sit down, eat.”
“We were pretty bad.” Delilah started filling her plate. “But you know what? Water under the bridge. We’re all one big happy family now.”
“One big happy family?” I glanced around the room. Everybody was busy, the food was being passed around, Trillian went back to handing pitchers of lemonade over to the table, and even though the demons were outside the gate, I realized that Delilah was right. We were one big happy family.
I slid the talisman back into the pouch. “I’ll put this on tomorrow afternoon to give myself a couple of hours to settle into my new looks. What are the specs on it? No dwarves this time, I hope.”
Trillian snorted and took a chair beside me. Smoky was on the other side. “No dwarves. I promise. You’ll look mostly human, though gorgeous as always. But you won’t look like you.”
Wondering what the charm would do, I reached for a chicken thigh and then piled mashed potatoes and gravy on my plate. Besides the coleslaw and biscuits, Iris had added a platter of carrot sticks, cucumber slices, and cherry tomatoes to the table, and soon we were all busy eating, telling them about our day. And for once, the rest of the evening proved to be just as calm, and we took full advantage of the downtime.
Shortly before bed, I closed myself into my study, where the Whispering Mirror was. It had been a long time since I’d had any time to myself and, with the upcoming foray into the Aleksais Psychic Network, I wanted to meditate.
My study had evolved over the past couple of years. When we first moved here, I’d furnished it with a desk, the table that held the Whispering Mirror, a couple of chairs, and a bunch of shelves and drawers to hold spell components. I also had a small table where I could blend oils or brew potions.
