I sorted through possible answers.I’m tired. I’m dying. The foundation of my power sprang a leak, and I don’t know why or how.But she and Jenny worried too much already, so I said only, “I’m fine.”
“I thought you and the house were connected. Didn’t you feel”—she waved at the wall—“all of this?”
“Hell if I know,” I said. “Every morning, I wake up with shooting pains in my bones, like termites burrowing through my marrow. I thought it was just me.”
“Maybe it is.” She was putting out those sexy succubus pheromones, but I didn’t think it was deliberate. They leaked sometimes when she got emotional. Not that they had any effect on me. I’d learned to block demonic influences when I was eleven.
“Is it possible we’re looking at this backward?” she asked. “Maybe it’s not about you responding to the house’s damage. Maybe the damage is coming from you, and this is how it manifests?”
My temper flared, mostly because the same thought had occurred to me. “I’m not accidentally destroying my own damn home, Annette.”
“Don’t you get snippy with me, Temple Finn. It’s my home, too.” She took a breath, visibly calming herself. “You’re almost a century old. When you don’t get enough fiber, all the pipes in the house get backed up. If your body is getting weaker, wouldn’t the house and its magic do the same?”
My grandmother had died from a heart attack when I was eight years old. When she collapsed, the wood stove in the living room had exploded.
“Maybe,” I grudgingly admitted.
If I was the cause, what the hell was I supposed to do about it? Age and entropy eroded us all.
I’d faced plenty of fellow spellcasters who’d tried to fight the effects of time: stealing the youth of others, body-swapping, even one who discovered a spell to allow him to age backward. I’d taken him in at the end, bottle-feeding him and changing his diapers for those final months until he de-aged past the point of viability.
I’d fought death and sent him running with his bony tail between his legs countless times, but I wasn’t going to fight old age. The cost was too high. But I didn’t want to take the Finn family homestead with me when I went.
I pushed those worries aside and focused on the immediate problem. “I need to run upstairs to fetch my book. I’ve got a spell that will incinerate the mold and sterilize the wall without damaging it. I should also call Phile, my dryad friend from Bow Ridge. He can restore the damaged wood. This will all be as good as new in a few days.”
“Temple...” Annette’s jaw tightened as she bit back whatever sympathy or reassurance she’d been about to offer. “When you’re finished, I need a favor. I’ve got a blood sample for you to track. It’s from the guy who attacked the harvester last night.”
“Put it in a ziplock bag and stick it in the fridge until I can get to it.” I turned toward the stairs. If I had to stand here and take one more minute of her poorly masked worry and pity, I was going to fireball the place.
“Can wepleasekeep the goddamned cat out of the sacred elixir?”
CHAPTER4
Jenny
Isat at the kitchen table and washed my morning pills down with a glass of orange juice. One pill for blood pressure. Another to take the edge off the arthritis. Calcium and vitamin D supplements for my bones. An estrogen supplement for the menopause. And a low dose of Prozac for anxiety.
I loved this room, with its old oak cabinets, the copper pots hanging by the stove, even the awful matching mint-green oven and refrigerator. The large window behind the sink let in plenty of light for the spider plants I’d hung to either side. A green glass pendant light hung over an oak table built by Temple’s great-grandfather.
The house smelled like incense, coffee, mold, and chocolate chip muffin batter. That last smell was courtesy of Temple, who was pouring the batter into pastel paper cups in three different muffin trays while he grumbled about the damage in the basement.
“The mold is dead, and I’ve bound a young water elemental to keep the groundwater away from the south wall. Phile will be here tomorrow afternoon to repair the framing.”
The name was familiar. “Didn’t I treat him for emerald ash borers last year?”
“That’s him.” He glanced at the doorway, presumably double-checking that no kids were lurking and watching. He’d caught me up about his mistakes with Ava, too. Once he’d confirmed we were alone, he opened the oven, slid the muffin trays inside, closed the door, and whispered, “Four twenty-five for seven minutes, then drop to three-fifty. Don’t burn them this time.”
The oven door locked. Rather snarkily, to my ear.
“Whatever happened down there, it wasn’t an assault from outside.” He pulled up a chair. “None of the protective spells were triggered.”
“You think it was coming from inside the house?”
He turned away. “I’m ninety-nine years old. A hundred and three if you include the years I spent trapped in a time-loop spell. I’m the last of my family, meaning I’ve got no children or relatives to keep the homestead anchored and strong when I die. What happened downstairs could be just the beginning. You and Annette should think about finding a new place to live. It might be dangerous to be here when I go.”
“You can’t kick us out,” I said lightly. “We’re on the title, remember?”
Temple had been in bad financial shape twenty years ago, following a nasty little war with a demonic cult out of Wall Street. I’d been between jobs at the time, following an eight-month stint as an EMT for the Fresno fire department.
