“Yup.”I confirmed the place and hotel.“Mom insisted we hold a room for you, but if you don’t think you’d be safe there ...”I let the sentence trail off.I had kind of an odd relationship with my sister, given her dedication to whatever ecological or animal-rights abuse caught her fancy.I was certain she was making a change for the better, but it didn’t make it any easier to be around her.
“Hmm.That’s a good question.”She chewed it over for a few minutes while I took pictures of the patchwork fields.“Go ahead and keep the room for us.I’m sure we weren’t clocked when we slipped into England, so there’s no way any of them will find us for one night at a small, out-of-the-way hotel.You’re paying, right?”
“Yes, I told Mom we’d pay for the hotel stay, but you’re on your own after that night.We’re not made of money, especially since I’m now unemployed, and no one wants to hire me.Thank god for Fang.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, now abstracted by her phone.“Oh good, Monk found the place.Right.I’ll see you on the seventeenth or eighteenth, assuming the coven doesn’t get word I’m back in England.”
She started to leave, but I caught her arm and stopped her.“You can’t possibly just walk off after an exit line like that.”
“That’s what good exit lines are for,” she argued, and tried to pry my hand off her arm.
I tightened my fingers until she glared at me.“Yes, and now you will explain what coven you’re talking about, and why they would be interested in knowing you’re in England.Did you become a Wiccan?”
“No, hedge witch.Vigilante hedge witch, actually.”She rustled around in her bag, and pulled out a pewter pentagram pin, which she handed me.“Here, you can use this for your something borrowed.The coven doesn’t believe in what they termed as being militant activities and methodologies, and told me that just as soon as I presented myself to them, they’d formally de-witch me.Ha!Like I’m going to allow them do that?There’s far too much at stake to let them stifle our work.Gotta run.Monk says he’s coming back to pick me up so we can meet with an informant who says we are needed to shut down a particularly heinous cockfighting group.”
“Wow,” I said, more than a little amazed by Bess.“There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s start with the big one: vigilante hedge witch?Aren’t hedge witches just people learned in the lore of the surrounding countryside?Herbalists and that sort of thing?Where does the vigilante element enter into it?”
“Someone has to make sure people treat Gaia the way she deserves to be treated.If they don’t, that’s where I come in,” Bess said darkly, then, without another word, trotted down the hill to the path below that led to a small car park.
“I think it can be said that I have the weirdest family,” I told the view; then with a sigh at having to bear the burden of being the only sane one in the fam, I made my way down the rocky track.
When I got home, I was surprised to see Fang’s car next to the house, since I knew he had meetings with the clinic partners.
“Just so you know, my sister has officially gone beyond wacky and into the land of outright bonkers.Er.You OK?”I asked when I entered the house and found Fang flat out on the couch with Tristan, the three-legged black cat we’d rescued a few months before, spread across his chest.Between his feet, Chloe, a nearly deaf, elderly border collie mix, was curled into a tight brown, black, and white ball.
“I’ve always thought of your sister as borderline deranged, so this news doesn’t come as a shock to me,” he said, flailing one free arm for a moment.
“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you so I can actually snuggle with the man I’m going to marry in a few short days.You two stay right there and hog all the Fang,” I told the animals, neither of whom had so much as glanced up at me when I entered.
Fang laughed when I plopped down onto the floor next to him.“You know I will happily divest myself of all animals to provide you with snuggling.”
“I know,” I said, waving away the offer.“Just as I know that the animals don’t actually dislike me.It’s just that they—like every other animal we come in contact with—like you so muchmorethan me.It’s not fair!I like them as much as you do, but all I get is a little cuddle on the lap whenever they think they can mooch food off me.It’s maddening that you’re some sort of animal whisperer, and I’m a far-distant second best.”
This was an old complaint, and one I trotted out whenever I felt ignored by the animals, but both of us knew it had no real bite to it.
Fang laughed again, but this time managed to remove both animals in order to pull me up onto the couch so I was lying half across him, his hands on my butt as I nibbled along his jaw.
“Oooh,” I said, squirming a little when his hands went wandering.“Are we going to have sexy times?Because if so, we need to close the curtains.You know how Mrs.Fliss drops by without warning.”
Fang gave the living room window a long look but, after a moment’s thought, sighed and retrieved his hands from where they were divesting me of my leggings.“Normally, I’d take you up on that offer, not that I want to try the sofa again after last time when you tried that fancy dismount and ended up breaking your toe on the coffee table.But we need to talk first.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, sitting up when I caught edges of anger and something more troubling in his tone.Was it fear?I gave a mental shake of the head.Fang was, as a rule, a cautious man where I tended to leap, then look, but at the same time, he was extraordinarily brave.He frequently tackled animals and situations that others refused, never once putting his own safety over his oath to protect and aid animals.“I don’t like the sound of that.I take it the partners had something to say to you guys?”
“You could say that.”
I slid off his lap, allowing him to sit next to me on the couch.He rested his elbows on his knees and watched as Tristan pounced on Chloe’s tail, leaving me with a sudden soggy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“What is it?”I asked, leaning into him.“Say it quickly, like you’re ripping off a bandage.”
Fang sighed again, then leaned back, wrapping around me.“As of the start of September, I will be without employment.”
“What?”The screech was so loud that not only did Tristan go into FRAP mode and tear off to race around the bedrooms, but Chloe actually heard it and rolled one eyeball in my direction.
Fang flinched, and rubbed his ear.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, on my knees next to him to hold a hand over his ear.“I didn’t realize I could make that sort of a noise, let alone in that volume.Did I blast out your earball?”
“Yes, but I still love you, and I don’t think any lasting damage was done,” he answered, taking my hand so he could give his head a quick shake, just like I’d blasted his ear parts around.“Although I know exactly how you feel.When Nickerson announced that all twelve of us in the county clinics are being let go, pretty much everyone was stunned.”
