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“Nothing!” I snapped, tossing another book aside. “Because I can’t actually do anything. I can’t keep people from dying. I can’t keep them from being hurt. I can’t keep them happy or safe. I’m this walking time bomb of potential disaster.”
“Stop!” he ground out, grabbing my wrists. “Nola, just stop.”
I whispered, “I’m so tired of this, Gabriel. I really am.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Gabriel assured me as Sergeant Lane wandered out of the shop without bidding us good-bye. “This sort of thing happens a lot around here. One of us is always being sprayed with silver or shot with arrows. You know, when I turned Jane into a vampire, it was because a local drunk mistook her for a deer and shot her. Jamie had to be turned when he was run over by a car right in front of the shop. Our little family is a magnet for trouble. The remarkably underwhelming attentions of Sergeant Lane are the result of his repeat visits here at the shop. And Jane’s come a bit unglued because Zeb’s never been hurt before. He’s her oldest and dearest friend. She’s not angry with you, understand that. If anything, as soon as Zeb is recovering, she’s going to throw herself into the search for the final Element.”
“Right,” I said, nodding as I grabbed my purse from behind the bar. “I’m heading home.”
“Let me drive you,” Gabriel offered.
I shook my head. “You go on to the hospital, be with Jane and Zeb. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m calling Dick!” he shouted after me as I walked toward the door.
“I know!” I called back, entering the darkness on full steam, almost wanting something to attack me just so I could strike back at it.
14
When all else fails in polite conversation with any supernatural creature, just smile and nod.
—Miss Manners’ Guide to Undead Etiquette
I came home to find that whoever had broken into the bookstore and attacked Zeb had made a night of it. My living room had been thoroughly trashed. My kitchen windows had been smashed with my own tea kettle. Upstairs, my bed was torn to hell, my soft sheets and quilts ripped to ribbons. My books were burned and torn.
“Right,” I growled, walking out the back door. I threw open the storage shed, the light of the full moon shining over my shoulder and bathing the complement of gardening tools in silver. I grabbed the first shovel I saw. Jed’s windows were dark, but I didn’t care at the moment. I got a cricket grip on the shovel handle and smashed the glass in Jed’s kitchen door. Gingerly, I put a hand through, but without cutting my arm to ribbons, I couldn’t reach low enough to get at the lock. I took a step back and swung the shovel at the doorknob, hoping to disengage the lock by brute force.
The shovel blade struck the metal knob with a deafening clang. I grunted, swinging again, the blade only glancing off the doorknob. “I really need to start going to the gym.”
As I once more raised the shovel over my shoulder like a bat, I heard a shuffling noise behind me and turned to find a hulking, dark shape looming in the darkness. A huge monster towered over me, with the legs of a man, a gray leathery torso, and a long, curved, and tapering snout. In the light of the full moon, I could see small, bright eyes and wide paw-like hands with razor-sharp claws. I screamed and swung the shovel wide, whacking the creature in the face with the broad side of the blade.
“Ow!”
Ow? Did the evil, drooling creature before me just yelp, “Ow?” I didn’t expect that.
Was this the strange shape I’d seen lurking in my back garden all this time? A creature that seemed to be covered in gray leathery skin and . . . was that an armadillo’s head? I’d watched a nature special on armadillos once with Nana. She called them “the sport-utility animal,” because nothing that ugly could go without purpose. The shovel’s handle slipped through my hands, the blunt blade edging my palms. I turned and swung for the fences, bringing the wood down across the creature’s thighs.
The thing dropped to its knees. “Ow!”>“This would be so much easier if you were a vampire,” I told him. “I could feed you some blood, and everything would just fix itself.”
“Jane says that all the time,” he mumbled as I tried to focus.
A bell tinkled toward the front of the shop. We both cowered against the sudden intrusion of light in the room. I sprang to my feet and grabbed the athame from the counter, brandishing it at whoever had just walked through the door.
I squinted against the light, but I could see now that the shop had been ransacked. Books were scattered on the floor, their pages ripped. The glass of the display cabinets had been smashed, and anything of value had been taken.
“Zeb? Nola!” Jane called as she came in, with Gabriel close at her heels, his face filled with concern. “What’s going on? Why does your brain sound like a car alarm, Nola? And when did we decide to electrocute the security system?”
“Jane!” I yelled. “Back here!”
Jane found me crouched over Zeb, trying to stabilize his head and prevent further injuries. Whatever color remained in Jane’s face drained away, and she seemed frozen to her spot on the floor, staring down at her friend’s battered body.
“What happened?” she cried, dropping to her knees next to Zeb and pulling out her cell phone.
“He said he was attacked,” I told her.
“Well, fix him!” she commanded me.
“I tried. It’s not working,” I told her, my voice cracking. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I checked him over, and his injuries seem minor. But I want a doctor to look at him. The trick now is keeping him awake and still. Why was he here alone?”
