Deborah shouldered the door open and scrambled gracelessly out of the car. She tripped over the seat belt, nearly fell, and caught herself against the Chevy next to her. The vodka bottle rolled off the seat and smashed on the road.
Glass crunched under her feet as she headed away from the car.
Jonah swore under his breath and shoved the door open.
“They followed you to me,” Jonah said. “Not the other way around. And how else did you think I was going to find you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” Deborah turned and swung her arm up to point a gun at his head. It was black, heavy, and held steadily in her manicured hand. “Move the truck.”
Jonah stopped and tilted his chin up. He could feel his breath in his chest, dry and scratchy. It wasn’t the first time someone had pointed a gun at him. When pumping the curse full of birdshot made no difference, people usually gave it a go with whoever they thought had cast it.
The experience didn’t get any better with repetition.
“Deborah,” he said. “You asked me to help.”
She exhaled shakily, but the gun didn’t waver. “Can’t you justkillit? Banish it?”
“It’s already dead,” Jonah replied to the first part of the question.
He let the second part drop. The answer would have been “to where?” and no one liked to think about that. Because eventually, the question stopped being what to do about the hag and became what would happen to them.
One day.
“If you want me to stop it,” Jonah said, “whatever it is, you need to talk to me. That’s the only way to find out who sent it.”
Deborah exhaled through her teeth, a peeved sound, and gestured with the gun for emphasis.
“Theysentit,” she said. “It’s what theydo.It’s what theyare.Did they send you as well? Is this a trap? Do you think I’m just going to admit to opening the strongbox? Move. The. Truck.”
Jonah hesitated for a moment, but he held his hands up in surrender when she gripped the gun in both hands. He walked slowly toward the open driver’s side door. The keys still dangled in the ignition.
“The Crows didn’t send me. No one did,” he said. “But if they didn’t believe what they accused you of—if they didn’t really think you’d opened the box they left in your safe-keeping—why bother?”
Deborah bit her lower lip briefly before she squared her shoulders and visibly shrugged off Jonah’s argument. She twitched the muzzle of the gun at him.
“Truck,” she said. “Or I’ll shoot you and tell everyone you tried to carjack me. They’ll believe it.”
Jonah rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. It had been a couple of hours since he left the road crew, and his skin still felt gritty. She was probably right that people would believe her.
He chuckled at the idea, a rusty noise.
“I mean it,” Deborah said. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Her upper lip was wet with sweat, and her breathing was ragged, but her aim didn’t waver. “I’ll shoot you.”
“I believe you,” Jonah said. “It’s just… I didn’t expect that to be the cause of death on my gravestone.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you’ll have to care,” she said. “You’ll be dead.”
Jonah snorted. “Trust me,” he said, “that’s not why I won’t care. I’ll move the truck, but I need to know what you did if you want me to help Luke.”
A pinch of guilt for that statement caught Jonah off-guard. He didn’t know what it was for. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to help Luke or have Luke be very grateful for that help. So what if that involved Jonah helping himself as well? “And I need you to check in the basement and see if anyone has moved the Crows’ stuff.”
“I told you, they haven’t,” Deborah said. “You’re wasting my time.”
“And you’re wasting Luke’s,” Jonah said. The accusation made Deborah flinch, and her hand trembled for the first time. “I can maybe keep him alive tonight, but tomorrow? The night after? It’s a hag. This is all it’s got, so it won’t stop. It can’t be reasoned with or bought off or kicked in the teeth. Theonlyway to stop it is to work out how it started.”
Deborah lowered the gun to her side. It rested against her powder-blue skirt. “You don’t get it,” she said. “This isn’t a stack of shoeboxes in my wardrobe. It’s an environment-controlled, hermetically sealed vault, like you’d find in a bank. If anything was disturbed, it would be obvious. Arlene would have told me.”
“The stripper?” Jonah asked.
