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“Technically? No. I mean, technically, you can park your camper or RV or tiny house just about anywhere in this area. But to, you know, put down roots?”
“How have you gotten away with it?”
“No one comes out this way. There’s nothing out here. What? That old farm? The cops occasionally come out to bust up a party on it, but it’s dark. No one sees me over here.”
I believed that.
I wouldn’t have ever seen the place if I hadn’t been following Everleigh. The house was painted to blend in with the mountains. And the greenery, well, it was a little abnormal, but not enough to draw attention.
And since, as she said, she didn’t come and go often, no one saw anything suspicious either.
“Why not settle somewhere legally?” I asked.
“Legally requires money. Even in an area like this, land isn’t easy to come by.”
“What? Being a hired assassin isn’t paying what it used to?” I asked, watching as her lips twitched a bit before she forced them into a frown.
“I do what I do because it needs to be done. There is some money in it, but not whatever the going rate is for a contract killer.”
“For a good one? Fifteen to thirty grand,” I said, watching as she tried not to look both surprised and impressed. At the cost. At the fact that I knew that kind of information.
“Yeah, I’m definitely not making that. But I don’t need much,” she added as two more chickens—one all white with a red comb, and one a mix of gray, white, and brown—came walking out of a garden bed, prompting her to let the third chicken down to join her friends.
“They don’t eat the poisonous shit?”
“No. They have plenty of bugs, flowers, and veg. They leave everything else alone.”
“So, since we’re being friendly and shit, can I get your name?”
“Well, you already have my address,” she said, waving around. “I guess my name can’t hurt. Morgaine.”
“Morgaine,” I repeated. “Like… in King Arthur?” I asked. “Is it your real name?”
“It is. I had a… quirky mom. Is Crow your real name?”
“Yes and no.”
“How can it be both?”
“On the one hand, it was the name given to me by one side of my family. On the other, it isn’t what is on my driver’s license.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, nodding. “Well, Crow. Now you’ve broken into my home and made it clear you are big and scary and I shouldn’t give you belladonna again, are you leaving?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, realizing I genuinely didn’t have a reason to be there, at her home. But finding that I didn’t quite want to leave yet. “This was all rather anti-climactic,” I added, shaking my head.
“Really? I thought it was pretty interesting there for a minute. With the whole knife scuffle and such. What did you expect? For me to swear you are my enemy for life and that I would try until my dying day to murder you via belladonna?”
“I mean, would it have hurt you to say it?” I asked, and this time, not only did a smile break free, but a tinkling little laugh did as well.
“Ow,” she said, reaching up to touch both her cheeks.
“Ow, what?”
“I haven’t laughed in a while. The muscles feel tight,” she admitted.
“Suppose that’s a good thing.”
“That my muscles hurt?” she asked, brows drawing together.
“That you haven’t laughed in a while. Figure if you are out here, all by yourself, cackling, something probably came loose,” I, told her, pointing toward my temple.
“Oh, something came loose a long time ago,” she said, moving past me and heading back around her house. “I have to get back to my mugs,” she said, and I suddenly understood what the material was on her face, hands, and apron. Clay. She was a potter or something like that. “Thanks for dropping by. It’s been quite a while since I had a physical altercation with a man. It really gets the blood pumping,” she added, but something bout the breezy tone contrasted the painfully straight posture.
“I wouldn’t have needed to grab you if you hadn’t tried to stab me,” I reasoned as I followed her back into her tiny house without invitation.
“And I wouldn’t have needed to stab you if you hadn’t shown up at my doorstep.”
“I wouldn’t have had to show up on your doorstep if you hadn’t stabbed and poisoned me.”
“Yes, well, we’ve established that was perhaps unnecessary of me, even if I’m not sorry about it,” she said as I reached for one of her many jars sitting around, twisting off the top, and smelling the contents.
And it was like an electrical current moved through me.
Because I knew that smell.
What was it she’d started to say when she heard the knock on the door?
Something about a hair mask, right?
Well, I knew someone who had a lot of fucking hair.
