“If I was the detective, I’d ask if you have any enemies.”
A laugh bubbled out of my throat. “That list might take awhile.”
“You are a very popular young lady, aren’t you?”
“The popularist.”
“I thought about Hank,” Wilder confessed.
Hank Shaw, Wilder’s brother, would be the kind of person a smart investigator would narrow in on first. He’d been with us in Franklinton when the whole Deerling thing went down. In fact, the entire reason we’d been there was to get Hank out of jail, and that had gone spectacularly wrong on every feasible level.
There was the added element of Hank having previously worked with Mercy as a member of her pack of strays when she’d taken to the streets of New York to kill Secret. So, yeah, he certainly had the pedigree of someone who would try to curse me to death.
Still, it didn’t feel right.
“Strikes me as being a little high concept for Hank. Not to mention the whole thing where I helped save his life. Is he still carrying some vendetta I don’t know about?”
“Hank is basically a walking bundle of rage and hatred.” Wilder glanced out the window so I couldn’t see his face. “I think he’s settled a bit since I let him take over the garage, but I also don’t think he’s forgiven me for picking you over him.”
I stared at the road so he wouldn’t think I was trying to read his face, but I wanted very badly to know how he was feeling about this statement of his. Did it bother him that his brother had so much animosity towards him, or was it something he’d just learned to accept?
I thought about Ben, and how utterly enraged it made me when he did and said the stupid bullshit he did on a regular basis, and how I still loved him furiously in spite of it all. Yeah, Wilder cared. He cared a lot, and he always would.
“I don’t think it’s Hank.” I glanced over at him, offering him a soft smile. “Didn’t even cross my mind.” I hoped he could tell I was being honest, because it was true, I hadn’t once thought about Wilder’s brother through all of this.
“If not him, then who? Cash?”
I scratched my cheek and watched the highway a while longer. Cash, my ex-boyfriend, had plenty of reasons to hold a grudge against me. I’d basically broken up with him for Wilder, and also because he just couldn’t deal with me being a werewolf, no matter how much he had claimed he was okay with it. Then there was the fact I’d exposed his last girlfriend Tansy for summoning a demon to eat her sorority sisters.
That was certainly a grudge-worthy level of stuff to have to deal with. I was sure he never wanted to cross paths with me again, but was he bitter enough to take revenge? I don’t know.
“Put a pin in that one.”
Before we could delve deeper into the list and start pointing fingers at girls I’d gone to university with, or Ben, or anyone I’d met in the last twenty-some years, the exit sign for the parking lot we were looking for appeared and I angled the car down a bumpy dirt road until we emerged at a little hole-in-the-wall boat rental place called Big Bess’s Boats.
I liked a good alliterative.
Bess, as it turned out, was not a made up character for the sign but rather a real live human being. True to the name of the shop she was a big woman in her early forties, round in the cheeks and the belly, with a mop of short white-blonde curls atop her head. She looked like a cherub, and smiled just as sweetly.
“Well hey y’all, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone wander in today. Near end of the season and looking like rain. What can I do for ya?” Her front tooth was crooked which added an element of undeniable charm to her big grin. I just wanted to hang out with her.
I was also spectacularly jealous of her button up Hawaiian shirt featuring rainbows and unicorns. Was this lady for real?
“Looking to rent a boat, please.”
“Sure, one hour or two?” She pulled out a sheaf of paper and started filling in the date on the paperwork.
I put my black American Express down on the counter. “We might be gone a few days.”
Bess lifted her head slowly and stopped writing, then glanced down at the credit card. “Are you two up to no good?” Her tone, previously so ebullient was now downright gritty with seriousness. She set the pen down and gave us a don’t fuck with me look that surprised me.
“You’ve heard of the Bayou Witch, haven’t you?”
“La Sorciere?”
I was taken aback. Most normies didn’t know her proper name, they just shared stories of her like she was an urban legend. If I hadn’t met her myself, I might not believe she was real either.
“Y-yes.” I glance cautiously at Wilder, whose expression remained stony and indifferent.