Where A Witch Goeth

I posted the letter to nowhere the next day so that I could truthfully report to Evander that I had written to Nick as we agreed. It was an exercise in personal angst that I had written unborn Nick a real letter, but at least I had magically hidden it below a more appropriate note, just in case. It was a last-minute decision I made when I realized the postmaster was a Buchanan.

I remembered that Minnie told me all the Dukes and Buchanans in Sanguine Springs knew what Van was. I wasn't sure that the postmaster's loyalty to Van wouldn't result in my letter being rerouted to his desk, and I knew quite well that Van didn't trust me. No matter what else he felt for me, trust wasn't a part of the mix.

With all the vampires torpored for the day, and a witch that Evander liked considerably less than me running around Sanguine Springs, my usual guards, Tracker and Trotter, had been temporarily re-assigned to make sure Maeve got up to no mischief. Evander had made it plain to her that she was to work no magic whatsoever during her stay. She said if she couldn't bespell the townsfolk to question them while the wolves sniffed around for our mundane person of interest, then she was of no use to that part of our investigation. Therefore she didn't accompany the wolves and me to town, choosing instead to sun herself by the pool and wait for our planned investigation of the woods and mountain slope that evening.

I made Tracker and Trotter protective amulets out of more silverware. These were rings, and they would go off like the bells for a five-alarm fire if Maeve tried to bewitch the twins in any way. I made sure she knew it, as she stretched leisurely like a cat on a chaise lounge. She just laughed at me and asked Tracker to slather her in sunscreen while sending Trotter off to get her a lemonade.

Still, I wasn't left entirely unsupervised with the wolves. Minnie came with us. And because Minnie was spending the day with monsters, Henry Dukes had traded in his saxophone for a chauffeur's hat.

A hat which Minnie promptly knocked off his head and threw out the window during the four-mile drive to the northern end of the valley where the town of Sanguine Springs was situated in the midst of several square miles of modest but picturesque homes.

The downtown blocks were red-bricked and faced with gleaming windows, consecutively stenciled with the name of every business and merchant one would need to live comfortably in Sanguine Springs and never leave. In the center of the downtown, there was a green space with a small white pagoda, equidistant from the courthouse and the Baptist church.

Henry and Cutter had accompanied Minnie and me to several dress shops and the post office so far, while the other two wolves Cutter brought followed at a more casual distance, sniffing deeper and longer. At the post office, Cutter had done his own business in cabling his Alpha in California. I couldn't imagine what that telegram said.

dead MM witch destabilizing treaty stop local vampire lord lost mind and marrying new yankee witch stop committed pack to hunt goetist stop please cease last sexual hurrah with preggo wife and hurry home stop

Yeah, probably not.

"I've always wondered. What happens to the vampires if they walk in the church?" Cutter said to Minnie in a low voice as he dutifully followed us from the post office to the dress shop next door.

"Same thing that happens to you, I imagine. They have a terrible urge to turn around and walk right back out again, compelled by guilt. From the murder of innocent people they couldn't stop themselves from killing, and the not-so-innocent ones they enjoyed killing," Minnie said matter-of-factly. She shrugged. "But Scots-Irish vampires are pretty practical, so they just avoid the uncomfortable situation altogether."

"So are you in the running?" Cutter eyed her speculatively. "To inherit the family curse?"

Henry choked on his own saliva when Cutter asked that. I guess it had never occurred to him that Evander might add to his Sept, but I knew that the vampire was at least considering the idea with Thacker and Troy. I wondered if Minnie knew that. I thought perhaps she did, but it was utterly impossible to tell what she thought about it because she ignored Cutter's question in favor of responding to Henry.