“Nothing is wrong. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“Nothing.”
He laughed softly while checking into the rearview mirror. “You’re a terrible liar. If you can’t trust me now after everything we’ve been through, I don’t know when you’ll be able to. If ever.”
“I trust you, Donatello. How many times have you saved my life?”
“Then what?”
I stared out the passenger window for half a beat. “The gris-gris. You’re very fascinated with the concept.”
“Only because you deeply believe in prisms and sticking pins in stuffed dolls that are scary enough as they are.”
“Jesus. Stick pins in dolls? When have you ever seen me do that?” His look of amusement was cause for me to hiss. “How do you remember that? I’d just met you.”
“Which is why the event stuck out in my mind so much. You were holding a terrifying doll, actively driving a nasty-looking huge pin into the doll’s face. I thought I’d stepped into a horror movie with your family.”
That caused me to punch him in the arm. “Very funny. There wasn’t magic around it. At least not really.”
“Who was the doll supposed to be?”
I folded my arms, looking away. Maybe he truly did know me better than I thought he did. “My English teacher. She gave me my only failing grade in my entire school career over a piece I wrote.”
“Fact or fiction?”
“Fiction. I wrote a little horror piece depicting the New Orleans graveyards and killer zombies and she didn’t like the material I’d selected.”
“Graphic?”
“Well, of course. You know me. She said I had a twisted mind and needed psychological help.”
“Wow,” he said, laughing.
“Yeah, wow. At least Mother cleared it up for me, ensuring I received an A on my beautiful story. You never want to mess with my mother.”
We both laughed while he headed toward the airport. We were far from being out of danger.
“Or you evidently. Any marks on the teacher?”
Shrugging, I bit back a laugh until I couldn’t. “She had all these ugly red blotches on her face for weeks. I was happy. All the gris-gris created and sold at Indulgence are meant to influence good spirits. You know. A blessing on a new home. A marriage. That kind of thing.”
“Ah,” he said, another round of amusement in his tone. “So the gris-gris at the rental house?”
Heat instantly slipped across my jaw, which I clenched to try to keep from admitting the truth. “Just wishing the house safety and protection.”
“Really?”
“And its inhabitants.”
He tapped his index finger on the steering wheel in a perfect rhythm. He knew it drove me nuts. So he kept doing it. A little trick when he was certain I was lying. “Fine. Okay? It was a spell for something more personal.”
“Involving? Come on. Spill it. We don’t have much time.”
“Nope.”
Every time he carried a certain tone when he laughed, the one that was deep and throaty, akin to the husky voices used for voiceovers and movie trailers, I always swooned or gave in to him.
