After the hobby store, Cale stopped at the first pharmacy we found, and I waited in the car with the djinni again while he went inside for Tylenol. I wanted to get it myself, but Xaphan wouldn’t stay behind, and I knew better than to take him into another store. Ten minutes after he went in, Cale came back with a plastic bag full of medicine. And I meanfullof medicine. Tylenol, aspirin, Sudafed, Aleve, Icy Hot, throat lozenges, and sterile bandages. He even got Chloroseptic throat spray, in two flavors, though what he planned to do with them, I have no idea.
After glancing through the drugstore-in-a-bag, I eyed Cale quizzically. He shrugged. “I don’t know what Dever gave him, so I figured it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“What exactly do you expect Lacey to do with this?” I held up a bottle of Midol, my lips quirking up in a smile.
“I don’t know. I just kind of shoveled things into the basket.”
Clearly. “Unfortunately, I suspect he’s going to need antibiotics, which they don’t sell over-the-counter.”
“Yes, they do.” Leaning to one side, he dug into his right pocket and came out with a small brown prescription bottle, with no label. “If you know how to ask nicely.” He tossed me the bottle, and I opened it to find at least twenty white pills. “Amoxicillin,” he said, in response to my puzzled look. “On the house.”
I screwed the lid back on and dropped the bottle into the bag with the other drugs. “What did you do?”
He shrugged. “There are a few advantages to being part incubus.”
My jaw clenched in irritation. “You played the lust card.” That didn’t sit well with me, even if he was using it against someone else.
Cale’s brows arched. “As if that’s not the card you played against the goblins when you rescued Cari. We all use the weapons at our disposal.”
“That’s different,” I insisted, indignation burning in my gut.
Cale crossed his arms over his chest. “How?”
“The weapon I was using wasn’t my ability to inspire lust. It wastheirlechery. I was exploiting a weakness. Not creating one through an unfair advantage.”
“That’s a very fine line,” he insisted. “In fact, I’m not sure I actually see it. A seam in someone’s armor is a weakness, but it won’t kill on its own. Someone still has to drive a weapon through that weak spot. Which is exactly what webothdid. You’re welcome, by the way,” he added with a pointed glance at the antibiotics that might just save Lacey’s life.
Damnit. The taste of my own hypocrisy was bitter, indeed.
“Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I have a bit of a hair-trigger where parasites are concerned.” For no reason I wanted to explain to him. Ever. “And…thank you.”
Cale grinned as he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway.
“What is the meaning of ‘on the house?’” Xaphan asked, and I answered without twisting to face him.
“It means he got the pills for free. At no charge.”
“Like a gift?”
“I suppose. Kind of.” After that, I blocked them both out, saving my energy and patience for the job at hand.
It took us twenty minutes to get to Chadds Ford and several more to find Linden Farm and the cemetery. I glanced around in amazement as we drove. The land had changed more than I could possibly have imagined, but just as I’d expected, it stillfeltexactly the same. We parked near the stone wall entrance and walked the rest of the way, and by then, Xaphan was insanely curious about our destination, probably made more so by our refusal to discuss…well, anything.
To his credit, the djinni was in a fine mood, ogling everything we passed and chattering incessantly about the smooth face of the grave markers, the neat cut of the grass, the electric lights overhead, and anything else he found inexplicable but fascinating.
Xaphan was easily the most upbeat psychopath I’d ever met.
I, on the other hand, felt myself sink deeper into melancholy with every step. Ihatedcemeteries, Birmingham-Lafayette in particular, and I avoided them whenever possible. Not because they scare me—they didn’t—but because it was really eerie for me to walk around looking at headstones for people who were born in my own generation or later, who’d died one to two hundred years ago. Cemeteries reminded me of what and where I should have been, which was no doubt part of the reason Dever chose to meet us in one.
But even worse than the personal reminder—and almost as bad as therealreason the demon had picked Linden Farm—was the fact that graveyards felt strange to me. They made me physically uncomfortable. After several minutes surrounded by headstones and pots of dead flowers, my skin started to itch and prickle. It was a bizarre feeling, almost as if I could feel the presence of death in the air against my skin.
I made a point to stay out of graveyards, so I hadn’t felt it in years, but if memory served, the feeling started in my hands. A tingle, like pins and needles. Just like I’d felt right before James Allen, the wraith, appeared at…
Son of abitch.
Understanding slid into place in my head with an almost audible click, and I stopped walking as suddenly as if I’d hit a wall. It wasn’t the cemetery itself I’d been feeling for all those years. Thosedecades. It was the wraiths. Ihadbeen feeling them—and no doubt seeing them—all along, and I hadn’t even known it.
But I knew it now.
