“What do you know about the demon?”
“He left the Underworld a long time ago.” She paused as if gathering up memories. “He caught a lot of souls. He’s very good at hiding.”
“And catching souls,” I said.
“He doesn’t do that anymore.”
“All demons take souls,” I said.
“No,” she insisted. “He caught a soul who changed his mind.”
“What kind of a soul makes a demon stop taking souls?”
She shrugged. “Just a good man from Ordinary.”
“You’re really selling this town, kid.”
We were at our room now and she hurried to open the door. “I want to see the ocean and the magic library. Maybe…maybe someday we can do both?”
She looked so small and hopeful, I gave her the comfort I could. “Maybe someday we can.”
The air that poured out of the room was at least twenty degrees cooler. The pain in my hand and arm was ramping up, and my mind was fixed on setting the damn thing or wrapping or splinting it.
That was my only excuse for not immediately registering that there was a woman in our room.
“Are you hurt?” She was short, maybe an inch under five foot, her gray hair cut in a smart bob. Her glasses were small, wire-rimmed octagons, and her eyes behind them were shrewd.
She wore a light shirt with a long, lighter overshirt that stirred as she moved.
Silk, I thought. It had a way to it, a movement. It had to be silk.
All her colors were green and rose. She looked like a garden.
“You.” She pointed to my wrist. “Hurt?” Like maybe I couldn’t speak English. She waved at an old-fashioned doctor’s bag on the bed.
“You need to sit. I have medicine.”
That’s when my brain finally caught up to reality. “What are you doing here? Who are you? How did you get into the room?”
“Yes, thank you, he means,” Abbi said. “You can help us.”
The woman’s gaze tracked to Abbi, and something in her body language settled. “I didn’t believe her,” the woman said, like we were all in on this conversation, except I, for one, had no idea what she was talking about.
“Franny has a way of embellishing things,” she said, “but she was right. Hello, moon goddess. I hope you don’t mind me not doing the worshiping yet. I’d rather get Brogan patched up first.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sitting in a hotel room with two women—witches, come to find out—who were doting on a certain little Moon Rabbit, who was secretly an attention-starved starlet, didn’t do much for my mood.
That I was the least important person in the room was evident. That Abbi was the most important was also evident, and she was eating it up like a three-scoop bowl of ice cream.
I’d find it funny if I weren’t being bossed around.
I’d been instructed to pull up the spare chair and sit, and to hold my arm steady.
“Hold it level,” the doctor, Cassia said. “Level, please.”
“It is level.” I shifted my hand trying to straighten it out. “Enough.” The pain throbbed—less if I didn’t move it, all the way up to stabbing if I did.
