And then he, too, turned tail and disappeared.
The noise level was immediately through the roof, everybody in Arcadia Falls laughing or whispering or saying, “I knew it!” or “He is not my lawn guy anymore!” or “If they get divorced, I’m takin’ back that dang toaster!”
Cash’s hand trembled in Keelie’s. “Did you have anything to do with this?” Cash asked.
“I didn’t make Mark a cheating scumbag or Sam a bad friend.”
“But the video—”
Keelie squeezed Cash’s hand. “Sure sounded like Mark and Sam to me. And photos don’t lie.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“Those did not.”
“True. That man loves a French fry.”
For a long moment they just stood there, hand in hand.
“Thank you,” Cash whispered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if I did, you’d be very welcome. Sometimes folks just get what they deserve.”
One of Keelie’s tables called her over, and trivia commenced, and the world went on spinning. No matter how Cash pressed her, Keelie’s lips were sealed. Maybe one day she’d tell Cash about the witch thing, and maybe not. She wanted to talk to Farrah about it, but Farrah was always run ragged on nights this busy.
“That was dirty pool,” Eli the trivia guy said as she was cleaning up, once the Arcadia Balls had won again.
“I told you they deserved it,” she said before looking up at him, a little guilty. “Can we keep this between us? I don’t want my sister to know I was involved.”
“I take it your sister is Cassia King, then.” He nodded in understanding. “Nope, sounds like the perfect anniversary gift was delivered to just the right people. I don’t know where that thumb drive came from.” He mimicked zipping his lips and locking away the key. “But maybe you should give me your number, in case I ever need some help with a video?”
Keelie’s heart just about exploded, and she gave him her number, and he texted her so she’d have his, and suddenly the world was just a little bit brighter than it had been since Noelle Halloran left town.
When Keelie turned her truck down the drive long after midnight, Gary was there to greet her. But instead of hee-hawing, “My love! My love!” he called, “Welcome home, my dear! Welcome home!”
“Hey, Gary!” she called through the open window, the summer breeze blowing in the sweet smell of grassy pasture, mown hay, and sleeping horse.
In that moment, Keelie decided that she did not mind being a witch at all.
She’d had her revenge, and her leg was going to get donkey-humped a hell of a lot less. That, in her book, was awin.
Contained
Tanya Huff
When he woke and turned on his phone, he had a message from Jack Elson. Sent twenty-three minutes after sunset, the message included an address and a terseBody. Get here ASAP.
Henry considered Jack a friend. In almost five hundred–odd years, there’d never been so many who’d been trusted with the knowledge of what he was. RCMP Inspector Jack Elson had seen a few inexplicable things and—to Henry’s amusement—had more trouble accepting that Henry had been the Duke of Richmond and Somerset, the Marshal of the North, and the bastard son of Henry VIII than he did with Henry’s being a vampire.
Bottom line, Henry knew Jack wouldn’t waste his time. The wordbody, as a sentence on its own, could refer to any number of things, but given the context, its meaning seemed obvious. The body itself—condition, manner of death—had to be beyond the scope of the police.
He wondered what it said about the times that he’d become a de facto police consultant.
At five p.m. on a December Tuesday, the traffic on Marine Drive was appalling. It had grown worse over the years Henry had lived in Vancouver, and he had no idea how anyone without his advantages survived the number of idiots now careening around on the road. He turned left onto Ontario Street, crossed Kent and the railway tracks, and entered a warehouse parking lot a stone’s throw from the Fraser River. It had to be the right place given the number of government vehicles.
His headlights picked out two uniformed officers vomiting onto the scrubby grass at the edge of the lot. One had fallen forward onto his knees, back arched as he convulsed and dribbled bile onto the asphalt. One might have been a rookie; the other was far too old. Henry spotted another pair as he pulled into a parking spot, the younger squatting by a squad car bumper with her head between her knees, gulping for air, the elder rummaging in a first aid kit spread out on the hood, tears pouring down his face.
Henry turned off the engine and spent a moment considering the situation. If the police were here in these numbers, if the police werethisaffected, he had to assume multiple bodies rather than the single body implied in Jack’s message. Moreover, the bodies had to be in the kind of condition that overwhelmed the coping methods of the VPD. He locked down the potential reaction to what would no doubt be ungodly amounts of blood and got out of the car.
