The Cougar's Trade (12 page)

“No, I haven’t forgotten. She can’t do what she needs to do if she’s cooped up here. What’s the alternative? That she sits around giving Hannah a pep talk all day? Ellery tried it yesterday and it got her nowhere.”

“Miles isn’t supposed to be
doing
anything. And besides, she seemed busy enough with you this morning.”

“She doesn’t work for me, Hank. I wouldn’t have a woman with the skill set she has puttering around this ranch all day. You do realize she had an actual job and a life before she came here, right? All of the women did.”

Jamie leaned forward and gave him one of those
well?
looks rude little kids were so good at. He narrowed his eyes at her. She might have been prepubescent, but he was still a dominant glaring member. He was entitled to
at least
a tablespoon of respect.

She stuck out her tongue and laid her head against Mom’s right arm.

He sighed. “Where was she going?”

“Not sure. She called around and made a list. Just leave her alone.”

“No.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Be—”

“Because she needs supervision? Is that what you were going to say?”

“She does.”

“She’s nearly thirty, she takes care of needy newborns, and she helps women deliver children for a living. I really don’t think she needs your kind of chaperoning, but that’s just one lady’s opinion. Might actually be easier for her to make friends if you’re not around.”

“I think she has enough friends already, and if anything, she needs to be cheerleading the one in Sean’s basement right now. And I’ve never known you to be cruel, Mom.”

She patted his hand condescendingly. “Not cruel. Just honest. If you think she’s going to call in the National Guard to rescue her and her friends, you might want to think through that a little harder. Now, move so I can deliver these lunches. Ranch hands are going to start eying my cows in unsavory ways if I don’t get some food into them.”

Grunting, Hank got out of the way, and Mom took off without another word and with Jamie waving at him until they disappeared into a cloud of dust.

“Dammit.” He dug his phone out of his pocket and got Belle on the line. “I think Miles is heading to town in Mom’s truck. Can you keep an eye peeled for her?”

“Nah.” Belle disconnected.

He stared at the phone. “What the fuck?” Obviously Mom had gotten to her first. He had one other number to try, though he hated having to call it. Coven leader Millie was always trying to increase cooperation between the supernatural groups in the areas, and to be perfectly blunt, the witches in town tended to be a bit…weird. Even in a town half-filled with weirdoes, they took the cake. They went beyond eccentric to being
touched
. Now that Ellery was one of them, though, they really had no choice but to be cooperative.

He dialed.

Millie answered on the fourth ring. “What happened? Do I need to round up the girls and circle the wagons?”

“No. My mate’s heading to town in a Double B Ranch truck, and alone. I just want to make sure she doesn’t get herself into any trouble.”

“So, she left before you could tag along, is what you’re saying.”

“You know the way it works, Millie.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll have the girls keep her on their radar screens. I know how much you Cougars hate being watched, but since she’s just plain old human, she won’t notice.”

Well, if Miles did notice, he’d probably be getting a hell of a…
Hell of a what?
She wasn’t going to yell at him. He couldn’t remember her having ever raised her voice in anger. Wasn’t like she was going to hit him or even try to run him over with her truck like one of Sean’s exes did to him once. She’d just pin a disappointed stare on him and make him feel like an asshole.

And he
was
an asshole. It was a heritable Foye trait, by all accounts. Like he would have to do for any other chronic condition, he had to stay on top of his treatment. And in his case, sometimes that meant not acting even when his inclination was to do otherwise.

“She probably won’t notice, Millie.”

“I’ll start a phone chain to the coven, then.”

“You know, you could just send a group text message.”

“A
what
?”

“Don’t worry about it, Millie.”

• • •

Hank kept his front door wide open, watching for signs of the white truck coming up the path as he worked on the sticking pocket door between the front room and dining room. Not a peep. Not a peep from Millie or Belle, and Miles had been gone for six hours, at least. She could have been halfway back to North Carolina if the flight schedules were working in her favor and she’d managed to get her hands on some cash. Mom might have given her back her license, but the rest of her wallet was still in the safe along with her phone. Maybe she could have that back. At least he’d be able to get in touch with her, and if she was going to call for help, she could do that from any device now that Mom had opened the can of worms.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go after her.” Sean—with a lip busted from its impact with the lamp Hannah had thrown at him an hour before—climbed down from the ladder he’d been perched on and wiped his hands clean on his pants. Yet again, he’d tried to coax Hannah out to talk, but she’d told him to go fuck himself. And she had obviously thrown a lamp at him.

Hank had never seen him look so tired. They’d gotten used to working routine night shifts to watch the desert for signs of demons, and sometimes that exhaustion carried over into the next day, but with his sagging shoulders and the dark hollows beneath his eyes, he looked more than tired. He looked ill, like he shouldn’t even have been upright.

“I wanted to, but Mason might have ripped me a new one. It took us until four o’clock to get caught up. When’s the last time you slept?”

Sean shrugged and rubbed his eyes. “Ah, who the hell knows? Hannah needs to be watched constantly when she’s out of the basement. If she doesn’t run, she’ll probably put a knife in my back.”

“But she’s right? She’s obviously your mate?”

Sean sighed. “Yeah. No mistaking it. My inner kitty cat perks up real nice when she’s around.
La Bella Dama
must have a hell of a sense of humor.”

“Yeah. I feel like we’re missing something from that legend. She really can’t be that much of a masochist.”

“Agatha says she is.”

Hank groaned and stepped onto the porch for a long look up the path. No Miles yet.

Agatha was Ellery’s many-times great-grandmother. She was ancient, and not just old. As far as he knew, she was the only goddess he’d ever met in the flesh, if they could call that stuff covering her “flesh.” She seemed to transform before his eyes from pale to barely-there when she was channeling the wind. A rogue from her pantheon, she interfered with humans more than most minor gods, and she was probably on some sort of kill list. She got into lots of fights with powerful things, but she always won. She was unflinching and immaculate. Rarely even had a hair out of place. She’d been working with Ellery and her assorted in-laws to help the Foyes find a way to seal off the hellmouth. It wasn’t just a
goodness of her heart
situation though. She was sort of to blame for it being open in the first place. She’d invited a fight with some rival gods, and apparently the cosmic disturbance ripped a hole between the realms.

Sean joined him on the porch and leaned against the railing. “Wouldn’t hurt to have some help monitoring the hellmouth until we can seal it. We’re stretched a bit thin right now.”

“We’ve been stretched thin for a year. It’s just worse now.”

“Who do we have who could possibly help? Cougars can only chase demons, so they can pop right back out in a day or two. Ellery can banish them, but there’s only one of her and her brothers-in-law aren’t going to teleport over to help every time one pops up.”

“What about Millie’s coven? They’re in the loop and know what’s happening.”

Hank cringed and looked up the path again. No dust. No headlights.
Where the hell is she?
“I don’t know. Some of them might be trainable, but given the average age of coven members tends to hover around sixty, I’m not sure if those folks are spry enough to do the job.”

“What if they had some Cougars to run herd while the witches worked their magic?”

Hank rubbed his chin contemplatively. “Might be able to do that.” Cougars could keep spirits and noncorporeal entities contained, but couldn’t make them stay away. They’d need magic for that, or, well…angelic power. Of all the things they were, they certainly weren’t angels. “We can talk about it at the meeting this weekend.”

“Yeah, assuming Hannah doesn’t kill me first.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or something.”

“Shut the fuck up, man. You wanted her.”

“Not for the same reasons you do. I always knew a leggy blonde would be your downfall.”
Fuck.
Hank had said it as a joke, but he did worry it would be true. There was always a chance Hannah would come around later—after the curse took effect—but Hank had never heard of that happening in the modern era. He didn’t even want to suggest it as a possibility. It would probably depress Sean more.

Sean snorted. “I guess I do have a type, don’t I?”

“Yep. The type prone to murderous mayhem, apparently.”

“Yeah, you’re not going to get that from Miles, that’s for sure. She’s like Bambi, if Bambi wore pink shoes and mascara.”

Hank rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. Think about it. It’s an underrepresented personality type in the glaring.”

“For good reason, probably.”

“Stop being such a pessimist. Look.” Sean pointed toward the rising dust down the lane. “That’s probably her now.”

And so it was. It took every ounce of self-restraint he had to not rush over to Mom’s and snatch Miles down from the truck so he could ask her, in simple terms, “What the fuck?” Instead, he stood his ground there on the porch, arms folded over his chest and tapping the toe of one boot impatiently.

Her smile waxed and waned as she approached carrying two large shopping bags. She looked at Sean, who waved, then at Hank.

“I guess you didn’t get abducted or otherwise harassed.”

She gave her head a slow shake. “I’m not sure who would be so eager to do that knowing what a hard time Edgar had of it with Ellery. I certainly wouldn’t want to pick a fight with y’all.”

“What’s in the bags?” Sean asked.

“Oh.” She set them down on the step and reached into one, pulling out several pairs of blue jeans. “There’s a branch of my bank in town. They let me withdraw some cash, and I needed some changes of clothes.” She let them fall back into the bag. “Did you eat? Your mother said something about chili.”

Hank’s turn to shake his head. “Nope. Been too distracted.”

“Demon?”

“Nope.”

Forehead furrowed, Sean leaned in and drew a long inhalation right next to her neck. “Huh.”

Hank didn’t like the sound of that
huh
, or of his brother being so intimate with his mate, when Hank himself didn’t even dare get that close. “What’s wrong?” he growled out.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you two
did
sleep in the same house last night, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I sure as shit can’t tell. See for yourself.”

Groaning, Hank leaned in and put his nose right against the crook of her neck.

She let out a little peep—apparently that tickled—and tried to pull away, but she couldn’t get too far with his arm around her waist.

“What the hell? She was right next to me all night, and it’s almost like she hasn’t been anywhere near me.”

“Or your stuff. She’d absorb a little of your funk through osmosis.”

Hank mouthed, “Fuck you” over the top of her head and leaned in for another whiff. Same result.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked.

“Maybe. Dunno. There’s not really a guidebook for this, just what’s passed down orally from one generation to the next.” Sean let out a breath and raked his sagging quiff out of his eyes. Hank wouldn’t be able to stand having hair in that in-between-y length. He thought his brother should either shave the shit off or grow it out. It’d drive him nuts hanging in his face all the time, but Sean seemed to enjoy playing with it. Had an entire countertop filled with gels and pomades he used whenever he wasn’t going to be wearing a hat.

“We’re talking about the same thing as when people in the glaring say Ellery smells like a Foye, right?”

“Yeah.” Hank leaned against the column and rubbed his chin. He looked to Sean. “Could it be contamination and we’re just not able to smell it through the other essences she might have encountered today?”

“If that were the case, those distinctive Foye notes would still be there after she showered.”

“I’m eager to see how this experiment turns out.” Sean leaned against a column, too, and watched Miles with far too much interest.

Hank rolled his eyes again. “Why don’t you go home and let your woman out of your dungeon? Feed her dinner while you’re at it.”

“You locked her up again?” Miles asked. Her high coloring seemed to blanch all at once.

Sean shrugged. “Didn’t really see where I had a choice. She can’t be left unattended for longer than a minute. She’s like a toddler, but one with murderous intent and a malevolent leer. I told her I’d let her out when she was ready to have a grown-up conversation, and I could barely jump back in time before she tried to slice my face with a shiv she made out of—get this—a mattress spring and a toothbrush handle. But don’t worry.” He gave Miles a little pat on the shoulder. “My basement is finished. She has pretty much everything she needs down there—except my body roasting on a spit and a way for her to get out.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? You do understand that to outsiders, this would be a very creepy situation.”

“After a while, all the weird becomes normal, and it’s the normal folks you need to worry about.” He waggled his eyebrows and started around the path to Mom’s. “I’ll try to save you some chili, but don’t take too long. I might decide the leftovers would look nice in my refrigerator.”