Bee turned to walk away. Linc raised his hand and knocked politely on the ward.
His special notes rang out.His notes. She hadn’t changed them. She could have when she moved the wards to this house. But she hadn’t. His whole body softened with… with whatever Bee had done to him so long ago.
Bedelia returned to the doors. With one hand, she lifted her mixed-amulet necklace and pressed the bloodstone amulet between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. Thehedgefell in a sprinkling of red fireworks that proved her strength and her ability as a witch. The scarlet had once been her special welcome for him. She had never changed it. Linc’s eyes landed on her, ancient hope held in his cold undead heart.
He strode across the lawn to the house as the middle ward rose again. She opened the glass door, touched the inner ward, and it fell. And Linc was standing there, on the back deck, his eyes on hers. All the love he had ever felt for her was laid bare in his dark eyes. “Hello, darlin’. Thank you for lettin’ me in,” he said. The paper in his hand crinkled. He had forgotten about the gift.
Bedelia
“Hello, darlin’. Thank you for lettin’ me in,” he said in his soft, old-fashioned Southern accent. He lifted his left hand, to reveal a brown paper bag spotted with grease.
“Ribs?” Bedelia asked, her mouth salivating. Whatever she had meant to say disappeared at the scent of heaven.
“And a whole chicken. Tater tots. Mac and cheese with bacon from your recipe. It’s still the bestselling side in the place. B’s-Mac. People order it by the quart to take home.”
Bedelia chuckled softly and stepped aside, accepting the bag and saying, “Mama’s asleep. Whatever you got to say, we’ll have to keep it quiet.”
“You eat. I’ll talk.”
Talk. Oh yes. Trouble and danger somewhere. Trouble followed the old vampire like bees after honey. Bedelia got out a plate, knife, and fork then poured herself some tea sweetened with stevia. Mama’s brush with diabetes had made her change some habits. She arranged two ribs and a chicken drumstick, both coated with Linc’s special rub, on a plate with three tater tots and a tiny helping of mac and cheese.
“I remember you being a bigger eater than that, Bee.”
“It’s late. I don’t want to be up with heartburn. And the nice thing about your cooking is that it reheats for leftovers.” She lifted a rib in the fingers of both hands and lipped the meat off. It was so tender, she didn’t even have to use her teeth. She closed her eyes at the flavors assaulting her.Heaven in a BBQ rub.She finished the ribs, ate a drumstick, and tasted the tater tots and a single bite of the mac. It was just like she made, every ingredient unchanged for decades. Full, she wrapped the food, put it in the fridge, and washed her hands. Sat and sipped her tea. He sat across from her at the kitchen table, silent, watching. She put down her cup and studied him back.
Linc was wearing facial hair again, the same look he’d cultivated in the seventies—the nineteen seventies. Even back then, she’d teased him about the jaw whiskers. The look was popular again and Linc was… Linc looked good.Damn it.“Out with it,” she said.
Linc smiled that smile, the one that used to melt her heart. He held her gaze, and everything he was and everything he felt poured into his eyes. “I miss you. I miss you every dawn when I go to bed. I miss you every night when I wake. I miss you when the moon is full and lights the land with a silver glow. I miss watching you dance under the moon, naked as a jaybird, my blood on your lips, your blood on mine. My life is empty and without meaning without you. I love you now and always.”
Bedelia looked down at her hands as he spoke, sadness twining through her heart like barbed wire. She didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She swallowed down her pain and blinked away her tears. Because,good God in heaven, it had been too long. She took a breath that shuddered through her chest, and she knew he could smell her sorrow and her love. “I love you too, Linc. But you didn’t come here to try and pick up where we left off. We both know that old and worn out love isn’t always the answer. Especially after Evangelina—”
“Your daughter did not seduce me,” he interrupted. “She tried. She managed to control me to a point, but she failed at that ultimate revenge and betrayal of you. Old hatred, old love, jealousy, and demon taint will do that to a human, witch or no.”
A sense of relief sailed through her. Bedelia’s eldest daughter, by one of the two human men in her past, had always wanted Lincoln. Had always been jealous of Bedelia, of her own mother’s power, of her happiness. “I sense…” Bedelia stopped and chuckled softly. “I sense a disturbance in the force.”
“That was the most amazing movie,” he agreed. “And yes. Evangelina did great harm, but not to my love and devotion to you.”
Bedelia intertwined her fingers together, waiting. For a vampire, especially the newly named Master of the City of Asheville, love and devotion meant very different things from what they meant to a woman like her.
Linc said, “One of the girls is in danger. Liz is camping with Eli, on a job to track down a missing dog. The dog was a ruse perpetrated by Romona Mayhew’s widower and two females.”
Bedelia frowned. “I remember the Mayhew name from somewhere.”
“Some time ago, Liz and Cia were hired to find a kidnapped human woman. The wife of one of my people, Romona Mayhew, who was one of the long-chained Mithrans who didn’t come out of the devoveo and also a witch, had broken free of her bonds and taken the human female. I didn’t know that Romona hadn’t been given the mercy strike of true-death, and her husband didn’t come to me to rectify the situation because he was still unable to release her. Romona used the lifeforce of the dead to do blood-curse magic. Your girls took on the blood-curse getting their client’s mother free.”
Bedelia breathed in with shock, putting it all together.
The devoveo was the ten years of madness that resulted from being turned into a vampire. It was one reason she had never agreed to be turned by Linc. Loss of personal freedom was also the reason she had never agreed to become Linc’s blood-servant. There were lots of reasons she had ended the relationship. She shook her head, pushing away the memories and the regrets. “I remember that story.” Taking on the blood-curse had been a less-than-brilliant move on her daughters’ part, but to this day, they felt that saving a human had been worth it. “Go on.”
“The rest is complicated and still comin’ clear. A woman named Shania Mayhew was an unaligned witch who was groomed by Romona’s husband to believe an evil had been perpetrated by Liz and Cia. Mayhew and she married, an alliance I did not approve. Working together, they discovered a human woman with a perceived grudge against Liz. Her name is Connie Carroll. Together, the three of them conceived a plan to enact vengeance on the twins.”
“I remember the Carroll incident. There was an accident involving alcohol and Connie’s daughter. She blamed Liz. What did this group do?”
“Shania glamoured herself or Connie to look like Golda Ainsworth Holcomb, of the Ainsworth witch clan, and met Liz in the local hospital.”
“Golda died a few days ago. I got the notice this morning.”
His face softened with humor. “Your girls are young yet. They don’t look at the obits like us old folk.”
