“It’s not that I don’t…” Jo shuddered. “It’s that I can’t even explain it. I was just at home, packing some of Fiona’s things to send home to her family, when the office called me. I thought it might be the results of the autopsy, but…it was the Loamshire examiner, wanting my professional opinion on the death. He said he made the incision in Fiona’s chest and she leaped off the table.”
No. Oh no.
“I just don’t understand. I found her myself. I checked all her vitals. She wasdead, Mina. The EMTs confirmed it. So then how did she shove Dr. Spencer and walk out of the morgue with a scalpel still sticking out of her chest?”
“Um…” How could I tell my best friend that her girlfriend was a vampire? “Have they found her yet?”
Have they contained her?
Jo shook her head. “They have her on camera running into the King’s Copse woods. The police are out combing the area for her. I came here in case she… I thought maybe if she was looking for me, she might come to you…”
The Headless Horseman chose this moment to float through the wall, drift across the room directly in front of me and Jo, and stop over the velvet chair where Heathcliff sat reading.
Jo’s hands flew to her mouth. She made a strangled sound.
“That man…that man has no head.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Heathcliff, get him out of here,” I hissed. I held Jo against me as Heathcliff picked up his broom.
“Go. Go on, off with ye.” Heathcliff shoved the Headless Horseman into the Children’s room and slammed the door.
“Mina.” Jo’s chest rose and sunk as she sucked in deep breaths. “Why did that guy have no head?”
I faked a laugh. “You’re freaking yourself out. It’s obviously his Halloween costume.”
“That’s not a costume.” Jo’s chest heaved. “You know it’s not. That blokecame through the wall, and he’s wandering around the shop without a head like he’s familiar with this place, like he’s another one of Heathcliff’s kooky chums. But that’s impossible.”
Beside me, Quoth twitched uncomfortably. He dropped his arm from Jo’s neck as a couple of black feathers tumbled through the air.He’s stressed, and when he’s stressed, he gets very feathery.
Shit.
Quoth, you can’t shift now. Please, Jo is freaked out already.
I met his eyes, pleading with him to be strong. He was focusing so hard I couldn’t even hear his voice inside my head.
Quoth’s lips parted, the word ‘sorry’ had started to form before it was torn away as his lips snapped and elongated into a hard beak. His arms went next, the fingers extending and the elbows twisting in a way no human elbow should twist. Black feathers shoved through his skin as his bones crunched and his body shrunk into itself, depositing his haphazardly-applied clothing into a heap on the floor.
Jo stared, her eyes wide with shock, as the man who’d been comforting her exploded in a flurry of black feathers.
A moment later, a raven hopped along the counter and peered up at Jo with curious, fire-rimmed eyes.
“Croak?”
To Jo’s credit, she didn’t scream. She just kind of stared at Quoth, her head bobbing as she swallowed again and again and again.
Heathcliff sighed as he moved toward the hallway. “I’ll flip the sign. I’m guessing we’ll be closed for some time.”
When he returned, he pulled a bottle of Scotch from his desk drawer and poured a generous lug into a glass. As he held the glass out to Jo, she swiped the bottle from his hands.
“Hey! That’s mine.”
“Thanks.” Jo sucked on the neck of the bottle like she was a baby with a pacifier. Quoth hopped onto her lap, and she stroked his feathers. Even in bird form, he had the power to calm her.
Although…maybe that was the whisky.
When Jo set the bottle down again, a significant portion of it was gone. She turned to me, and I didn’t need perfect vision to see she was freaked out. “I suppose you’d better tell me what’s going on.”
