“Maybe I’m a charitable man.”
“Yeah,” Jonah drawled, “Charity is for priests.”
The man shrugged and picked his teeth. The red skin of the apple was caught around his gum line.
“Maybe I just don’t like the bitch that made the call,” he said, his voice suddenly drained of emotion. “Apples are a dozen for ten dollars. I’ll throw in the name of the bar for free.”
That rang true, and what did Jonah have to lose? He reached into his back pocket for his wallet and flipped it open. The fifteen bucks he’d quoted had been pulled out of the air, so he hoped there was enough in there.
“Double or nothing,” he said as he pulled out a tattered note and held it out. Habit. Another one he needed to break. Jonah bit his cheek in annoyance. It wasn’t such a sure bet when he couldn’t slide the odds to be in his favor. “Bad joke. Just give me the apples.”
The man bagged them up and twisted the top of the paper bag closed. He started to hand them to Jonah but doubled over in a coughing fit instead. The hacking racked his body and doubled him over. He dropped the apples, and they hit the asphalt with a squelch.
“Shit,” the man said. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist and carefully straightened up. This time the red on his teeth didn’t come from the apple. “That’s going to be the death of me.”
Jonah offered the money from arm's length. “You should see a doctor.”
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” the man said. He plucked the ten out of Jonah’s fingers and tucked it away in the cash box. “Trust me, they’d not like what they found. Check out the Cana Hotel. Deborah usually parks behind it to get shit-faced during working hours. Blue Mercedes.”
The bag still lay on the ground. The juice from the smashed apples had started to seep through the paper. Jonah bent down and scooped it up anyhow. There was blood on the paper. He fastidiously avoided that as he headed back to the truck and tossed the bag into the footwell on the passenger side.
He’d passed the Cana Hotel on his way out here.
“Hotel” might have been false advertising. The Cana was a squat prefab motel with a flickering vacancy light under its sign and a resident hooker on a lawn chair outside a room. It also had a handy liquor store right on the corner of the lot.
Jonah cruised around the hotel until he found the powder-blue Mercedes parked out back. Old enough it had more class than flash, with enough wear to give it an air of mystery. The sort of car that would fit into the world Deborah had inserted herself into.
He pulled up behind her to block her in, just in case she’d changed her mind about his help, and climbed out. Through the back window, he saw her look around and then sink down into her seat as if that would fool him.
“Get out of the car,” he said.
Deborah didn’t. After a second, Jonah swore under his breath and headed around to the passenger side to let himself in.
The car had pearl gray leather seats and a matching dash. It deserved a better class of liquor than the vodka that Deborah had wedged between her knees.
“They take away your chip for that,” he said.
“Not going to be the first time,” Deborah said. She fiddled with the lid on the bottle for a moment and then closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
If he was honest, Jonah hadn’t realized how angry he was until Deborah’s unasked-for apology jostled it. For a second, he had to clench his teeth to hold back a snarl of vitriolic blame.
A year of long days and blistered hands, nights spent on the couch as he tried to care about sports, and the migraines that came from turning a blind eye to fucking everything. Now, not twenty-four hours after she’d stuck her tongue down his throat, he had a hag’s attention, had been dropped chin deep into the local supernatural underworld, and had gottenhexedlike some daylight idiot.
He could feel Shiloh’s spell under his skin. It tweaked at his nerves with the reminder of what exactly he could do… if he gave in to the temptation.
All because he’d picked the wrong AA meeting and tripped over a drunk with a connection.
Not entirely fair, though, was it? Jonah balled his hand into a fist and pressed his fingers against the shallow cuts scored into his palm. Deborah had probably earned her guilt—nobody dragged a hag that mean and strong out of the grave dirt for aslight—but she didn’t owe it to Jonah. He’d done this to himself, one way and another. His sampling of other people’s convictions had set him up for this, and he’d not been dropped into Shiloh’s world. He’d waded in, sure that nobody here could do anything tohim.
“What did you do?” he asked. “Who did you piss off?”
Deborah laughed, a harsh, choked noise without any real humor in it. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice cracked. “That’s the thing, I don’t know. The Crow and his crew because they want more power? One of the sugar dolls who don’t like to be reminded how they charmed themselves into a rich man’s bed? I don’t… Jesus, I associated with a lot of dangerous people, Frank.”
“Everyone does,” Jonah said. “Most people just aren’t aware of it. When did it start?”
Deborah ran her hand through her hair. Strands tangled around her fingers and pulled out of the loose ponytail at the back of her neck.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said. “That’s how I got into this. I worked for the Haddon family, drawing up contracts, and eventually…”
