“Oh, great. Then everything’s fine. I’m so relieved. Give her a hug for me.”
“No! Everything’s horrible.”
“What’s wrong?” Jack demanded. “Is she hurt? Do you need us?”
She sighed again. “No. There’s nothing you can do. She’s surrounded by the worst possible villains right now, and nobody knows where they drove off to. It’s going to take everything I can muster to get her out of there.”
Jack’s gaze met mine, and we both flinched at the idea of just how bad it must be, considering the year we’d had.
“Is it warring Fae royalty?” Jack asked.
“Killer leprechauns?” I asked.
“Clowns?” Jack.
“Ghosts?” Me.
“Worse,” Susan said, cutting us off. “Phleabottoms.”
3
Jack
With Susan’s news, telling Tess about Sedona dropped on my priority list, and I tried not to feel relieved. She knew about my past, at least in broad strokes, if not the details. She knew that sometimes I had to go help in a crisis when people from my former life as a soldier and rebel leader in the vampire war popped up.
I thought how I’d feel if Tess dropped “I’m leaving town, can’t tell you much, back in a week” onmyhead and suddenly felt like a jerk. Or at least jerk-adjacent. But there was no time to dwell on guilt. We had a missing grandmother to find.
“Jack, find Mrs. G and make sure she’s okay. From what Susan was telling me before you came in, these Phleabottoms are not the most … reliable. Or even trustworthy. If they’ve had her out all night—does she even have her medicines?”
“She takes medicines? What medicines?”
Tess threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know! But she’s old, so probably. Please, just if you have time, please go help.”
“Of course, I’m going to help. I’ll let you know as soon as we find her and have her tucked safely into her house.”
She bit her lip. “I’d go if I could, but I’m on my own here this morning. Eleanor has wedding stuff to do. I guess I could close up …”
I pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. This was one of the many reasons I loved her: She’d do anything, anytime, for people she cared about.
Okay, and I’m a guy. It didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, either.
Even in her faded jeans, sneakers, and Dead End Pawn sweatshirt, her gorgeous flame-red hair drawn back in a ponytail, she only had to look at me with those sparkling blue eyes, and I was toast. For a few seconds, I got stuck in a memory of Tess that morning, her hair spread out on the pillow next to mine, and my brain melted into my shoes.
“Jack! Stop it!” Her face was pink, as if she’d read my mind, which I knew wasn’t one of her gifts. The look on my face had probably been obvious, though.
I grinned at her. “I can’t help it. You’re so beautiful.”
She flashed a smile at me and rose to her toes to kiss me. “Right back atcha. Now go find Granny G.”
I left Tess giving the zucchini plant a puzzled frown and headed for my truck. Sedona could wait for a few hours. I owed that vampire nothing. Well. Maybe a right hook.
I had a missing granny to find.
* * *
An hour later, I was having my doubts. Finding a lost woman in a town the size of Dead End should have been a piece of cake, and I wasn’t even the only person looking. Dead End, Florida, population 5,000, depending on when the McKees had their family reunion, was not exactly a sprawling metropolis.
Thinking of the McKees, I shook my head when a pair of the younger ones ran across the road directly in front of my truck, and I had to slam on the brakes. That family. I’d heard about Frank Sr. summoning a demon. I’d met Frank Jr., aka Frog, when he was running around with a murder weapon, and everybody knew about Bubba and his boa constrictor. Factor in a couple dozen cousins, and you had a very odd family tree.
