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Denny kept smiling as he watched her walk away.
“I think she likes me,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out something round, tossed it in the air, and caught it confidently in his palm.
“I think she’s liable to break your nose.” I shoved his shoulder, the same way I would’ve pushed Kingston or Dylan for hitting on a woman while she was trying to do her job. “What’ve you got there?”
“Melony told you she had a new perfume that masked her scent.” Denny held his hand out, showing off a globe-shaped glass bottle with golden atomizer on top. “I’ve never heard of such a thing myself, but if it works… This was the only bottle in the room.” He smirked. “Thought it might be useful.”
I studied the bottle, considering it. It was only about a quarter full, so she’d used it a lot.
“Cordova might say that taking it was disrupting her crime scene,” I warned him.
“Didn’t hear you telling her about the Du Ponts.”
I snorted, and he grinned a little broader.
Fair enough.
“Come on. I wanna get out of here,” I said, heading away from the hotel.
“The Du Ponts’, then?” Denny asked. “I can book our flights now.”
“We’ll head back to Evergreen tonight,” I agreed. “But first, there’s something else I need to do.”
* * *
Our first visit to Mama Striga had cost me a couple thousand dollars.
Our second was free.
Funny thing about doing business out of a hotel room: once someone knew where that room was and were willing to kneecap the rhino shifter standing guard at the door and swipe his key card from him, it wasn’t all that difficult to get inside.
Mama Striga was seated in the same armchair she’d been in when we first called on her. Today, she wore a pale lavender suit.
As we stormed in, she stared up at us with especially wide eyes.
“You lied to me,” I snarled.
She blinked, playing the innocent. “Did I?”
“You said Melony Houghton had a baby with her.”
“And she did, didn’t she?”
“A doll. A goddamn doll.” I tossed the fake baby on the floor in front of her chair. “You let us waste days and days of our lives—you let us squander time we didn’t have—over a fucking toy!”
I couldn’t take my rage out on Melony Houghton, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Striga get away with giving us the runaround.
Striga regarded the doll expressionlessly. “Then, I suppose when you asked about the baby, you should have questioned what kind.”
I rolled my eyes. I got why Denny hated this woman. Whether or not she could break a curse, it didn’t matter. She was rotten. Any solid she’d done us was negated by how much she’d held us back.
“What else did you lie to me about, huh?” I demanded. “Do you really believe you could help my mother, or was that bullshit too? Melony’s curse—were you ever even trying to break it? Or are you just the fraud everyone says you are?”
Striga scoffed. “I am no fraud, Alexander Miller. The things I could tell you, the things I have seen… they would break your world.”
I studied her. She was so tiny, I could pick her up and punt her right across the room.
“Pass,” I said dryly. “Denny was right. Youarea fraud.”
