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“Aren’t you going to invite us in, Santiago?”
The witch took a looooong time thinking about his response before he stepped out of the doorway and walked into the house without waiting to see if we’d follow.
He had even more tattoos than I initially saw. Symbols of various magical wards and protections, things I’d only glimpsed at in books. They covered his chest and back, and he had an incantation that wrapped all the way down his left arm from shoulder to wrist.
It might have been my imagination, but it looked as if the words were moving like a snake.
I shuddered.
We trailed Santiago through the house, though my curiosity had me whipping my head around every few feet, catching a glimpse of something new I wanted to stop and investigate. In addition to the crammed bookshelves—all lined with historical volumes about the area, and spellcraft, and the
supernatural—he had hundreds of knickknacks that sparked my curiosity.
The shelves were covered in stones, animal skulls, and bits of shiny rock and dried herbs. Small trinkets I was pretty sure were Nepalese, and puzzle boxes covered in runes. I had to put my hands in my pockets to resist the urge to touch absolutely everything.
Where the walls weren’t covered in shelving, red damask wallpaper peeked through. Framed photos hung at various intervals, showing beautiful landscapes of jungles and mountains.
The air inside the house smelled like incense and…was that tomato sauce?
Santiago led us into a large kitchen, where a heavy silver pot was on the stove, bubbling away, steam and basil scent wafting all around us. The island in the middle was covered in a mixture of spell implements and a chopping board with garlic peel and tomato seeds left on it. A huge mortar and pestle sat in the middle of the island, and I noticed an unground grasshopper leg inside, alongside bay leaves and something that might have been…
Well, it was a viscous fluid that looked deeply personal to Santiago, let’s stop there.
Overhead was a pot hanger with copper-bottomed pots and pans hanging alongside more dried or just-starting-to-dry herbs.
This guy was incredible.
I broke off a bud of dried lavender and rubbed it vigorously between my palms to release the smell. Santiago watched this with quiet interest, and I realized I’d done it without even thinking.
“What do you want?” he asked again. The words were for Cain, but he was staring at me.
“Do you have any wine?” Cain had already started to check through the cupboards, not waiting for a response or invitation.
Wilder leaned against one of the kitchen counters, crossing his arms over his chest. I doubted he’d taken his eyes off Santiago once since the first moment he appeared.
That made two of us.
Santiago opened a cabinet door below the sink with one foot and took out an uncorked bottle of red wine, the stained cork stuck in the mouth of the bottle. He set it down on the island and made a by all means gesture to Cain.
The Collector had found a wineglass and poured himself a serving of the red.
“Very gracious, thank you.”
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”
Guess Cain hadn’t called ahead.
We didn’t have time for tiptoeing around this, and Cain appeared to be having a grand old time sidestepping the point.
“A demon,” I said, finally trusting myself to make coherent words. “There’s a demon in the Delta Phi sorority house, and girls are going missing. Cain thinks you might be able to help capture it.”
Santiago narrowed his eyes at me. “Say that one more time?”
I glanced at Cain, who was sipping his wine, and at Wilder, who was still staring hard at Santiago with a naked kind of distrust that bordered on a glare.
“We need you to help us catch a demon.”
For the first time since we’d arrived, Santiago smiled, flashing pearly white teeth and one solid gold cap on his front incisor. I wanted to think it looked stupid, but he kind of resembled a pirate, and it was hard not to see some appeal in that.
