Crushed (City of Eldrich Book 2) (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

B
etween the report,
the salad plate, and her cup of coffee, Meaghan didn’t have a free hand to use her phone. She headed for the nearest bench in the town square and called Natalie.

“Where are you?” Meaghan asked.

“At home, clearing out the spare room for Jamie. What’s up?”

“Have you heard that Marnie and Jhoro are missing?”

Natalie gasped. “What? Please tell me he’s okay.”

Meaghan shut her eyes and groaned. “Not you, too.”

“Not me too what?”

“Natalie, listen carefully. Something weird is going on. Something magically weird. Is there any way you can trace Marnie and tell me where she is?”

“If that bitch hurts him, I’ll kill her.” Natalie’s voice shook with anger. “She’s using him. She doesn’t really love him.”

“Natalie,” Meaghan said in a low calm voice, “please listen. Take a deep breath and try to clear your head. Something stranger than normal is happening. Nobody knows where Marnie and Jhoro are. You and Sally, over at the Brew, both appear to be much fonder of Jhoro than you were yesterday and everybody suddenly hates Marnie. What the hell is going on?”

“Sally better stay away from him, too,” Natalie said in a shrill tone Meaghan had never heard her use before. “I’m the only one who really loves him. Marnie’s only using him for sex. She doesn’t understand him like I do. You saw him last night. He couldn’t keep his eyes off me.”

Okay, Meaghan thought. Definitely magic. At mealtime, Jhoro only had eyes for his plate. “Natalie, does anything about this conversation seem odd to you?”

“Yes, you just told me the man I love is missing and you don’t sound panicked,” she said in a rush. “Unless . . . unless . . .
you
did something to him. I’ve seen how you look at him.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake, Natalie.” Meaghan’s patience was fraying. “I’m probably the only woman in town who hasn’t been looking at him that way. Think. You’re under some kind of spell. How we do we find Marnie?”

“Forget Marnie,” Natalie said, nearly in tears. “We have to find Jhoro.”

Meaghan shook her head. Time for a new strategy. Natalie was off the rails and headed for crazy town. Meaghan wouldn’t get any useful information unless she followed her. “The best way to find Jhoro is to find Marnie. Can you do a locator spell on either one?”

“I can try. But if Marnie’s trying to steal him from me, she’ll already have thought of that and hidden him.”

“Let’s hope not. You need to try to find them. But just locate them. Don’t try to confront Marnie, okay?”

“You can’t have him either.”

“Natalie, I don’t want him. I like him in a mommy way only. Trust me on this. I’m on your side.”

“You are?” Natalie asked suspiciously.

“Absolutely. You’re the girl for him. I knew it the moment I met him.” Meaghan rolled her eyes. She hadn’t been aware that Natalie had any interest in him at all until last night, but whatever.

“You promise?”

“I swear. You find Marnie, but let me deal with her. We don’t want to tip her hand that you’re on to her, okay?”

Natalie agreed and they said goodbye. Meaghan picked up the cooling cup of coffee and took a big slug. She now had a fairly strong suspicion about what was going on. Marnie had tried to cast some kind of love spell on Jhoro and the spell had gone sideways.

“As if I don’t have enough bullshit to deal with,” Meaghan mumbled. She drained the coffee cup. She needed to find Marnie before a jealous, love-crazed witch did. And judging by Nate’s jealous reaction to Sally’s fawning, Jhoro wasn’t safe either.

Meaghan also needed to determine how far the contagion had spread. And how it was affecting people. City hall was in the crazy-making zone, and judging by Natalie, so was her neighborhood a few blocks west. And it seemed to be affecting the magical and non-magical alike.

The first number on her speed dial was Russ’s cell.

“Yeah, Meg, what’s up?”

“You know where Jhoro and Marnie are?”

“Haven’t seen him. Or
her.
” There was a growl in his voice Meaghan didn’t like.

“Why did you say it like that?” Meaghan asked.

“Say what like what?”

“You kinda snarled when you mentioned Marnie. I thought you guys were friends.”

“I snarled?” Russ sounded genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, you did. Something weird is going on and it involves the two of them. Think. When’s the last time you saw them?”

“Uh . . . dinner. When they took off right after dinner.”

“Any idea where they might have been going?”

“For a ride in the car is my guess. Jhoro’s eyes always light up like that when he gets in a car.” Russ giggled like a teenage girl. “He loves it. Sticks his head out, that long blond hair streaming behind him. He’s so gorgeous.”

“Russ, will you listen to yourself? Since when are you hot for Jhoro?”

“Hot for . . . God, I did get kinda giddy over him right there. I . . .” He trailed off. “Am I gay?”

“You like girls. You always have. My gaydar has you pointed at true hetero. Something magical is going on. Kady called Marnie a slut—”

“Which she totally is. Did you see—”

“Russ! Get a grip. I was just over at the Brew, and Sally and Nate are fighting over her sudden love for Jhoro. Nate was downright grumpy.”

That got Russ’s attention. “Nate was grumpy?
Nate?
Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. And Natalie is referring to Jhoro as the man she loves and she’s ready to tear Marnie apart.”

“There was a little bit of that going on between them at dinner,” Russ said.

“Well, there’s a whole lot more going on now. Trust me. Things are not normal and if it’s magical, you’re being affected, too.”

“So I’m not gay? Because I’m feeling really attracted to him right now. Because I’m . . . he’s . . . well, you’ve seen him. You know.”

“Yes, I know. And if I wasn’t impervious, I’d probably be drooling all over him too. You aren’t gay, you’re hexed.”

“I mean not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, only it’s so . . . sudden. Could that be why I keep getting divorced?”

Meaghan snorted. “You keep getting divorced because you let your pecker pick your wives. Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Stay there, okay? I have to figure this thing out. If you see or hear anything about Jhoro or Marnie, call me on my cell.”

Okay, she thought as she hung up. That was weird. The two straight men she’d talked to were having different reactions. Nate was jealous of Jhoro and angry at his wife’s sudden attraction. In contrast, Russ was ready to come out of a closet Meaghan knew he’d never been in.

She had to get back to the office, but couldn’t summon the energy to stand up. Lack of sleep was catching up with her despite the jolt of caffeine. Poltergeists, leprechauns, magical refugees, secret wars, a new sister, domestic violence—wasn’t that enough to deal with?

Sex. It always came back to sex. As did quite a lot of crime and violence. A runaway love charm could go very wrong very quickly.
And the only person who isn’t affected is too tired to drag her ass off this park bench
. Time to get back to the office and sort this out. She needed to find Jhoro and Marnie. Most of all, she needed to find someone not lovesick to help her clean up this mess.

Meaghan immediately thought of Owen Finnerty, but she couldn’t be sure he hadn’t created the mess in the first place. Screwing with humans in unexpected ways? Classic leprechaun behavior.

But what would it get him? She couldn’t see the advantage for him, at least not in the context of what he claimed he wanted from her. But that was the problem. He was a leprechaun. She couldn’t trust anything he told her without knowing more about him. She needed the dirt on Owen Finnerty. If he was as old as he claimed, there’d be plenty of it.

Time to call the Troon.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
he Troon, like
humans, were not particularly adept at using magic. They didn’t need it. What they could do was even better.

They translated.

The Troon had four sets of vocal cords. The result was a language so complex that most other languages were laughably easy in comparison. The magical realms were full of complicated dialects and no shared language, making the Troon indispensable.

They also gossiped relentlessly. They would keep a secret if required, or if it was to their benefit, but recognized no general right of client confidentiality. If you wanted to know who was who and what was what in the magical worlds, you talked to a Troon.

The problem was finding one if they weren’t currently in the human world. Short of driving to their gateway in the woods and shouting, Meaghan had no idea how to contact the three Troon she knew—Melanie, Wally, and Sid. Even if she knew where to look for them, Troon was another world where she wasn’t welcome at the moment.

She didn’t know their Troon names and even if she did, they were unpronounceable with human vocal cords. As far as she knew, they didn’t have human last names, but then she supposed they didn’t need them. It’s not like they needed to forge papers or anything. There were no magic amulets that could make a Troon look human and one look was all it took to realize they were from somewhere very far away indeed.

The Troon had blue skin and hair. About the size of ten-year-old children, they had small orange eyes, porcine noses, and tusks. They were also hermaphrodites, bearing both male and female sexual organs. Culturally they seemed to recognize gender roles, but, as far as Meaghan could tell, the distinctions were quite fluid.

Melanie, for instance, reminded Meaghan of her mother. Meaghan always thought of Melanie as “she.” Yet, even though Meaghan knew Melanie was Sid’s parent, she wasn’t clear on whether she was Sid’s mother or Sid’s father. Or possibly both.

Normally, Meaghan would have asked Natalie to get in touch with them for her, but Meaghan wasn’t sure she wanted Natalie to know what she was doing. An extremely powerful witch, Natalie could wreak havoc even on Meaghan. She couldn’t hex her directly, but she could hex everything around her. Being impervious wouldn’t protect Meaghan from Natalie dropping a desk on her or setting the room she was in on fire. And, at the moment, Natalie had all the rationality of a lovesick teenager. A magically super-charged, lovesick teenager.

Meaghan headed back to the office and forced herself to eat her lunch even though she wasn’t hungry anymore. All coffee and no food wouldn’t do her any good. She tried to read Owen Finnerty’s proposal while she ate, but quickly gave up. She couldn’t concentrate on the proposal because her mind was too busy coming up with nightmare scenarios of lovesick witches battling in the streets. And if the non-magical were affected, as her encounter with Sally and Nate and the phone call with Russ suggested, then casualties were likely.

Without Natalie, Meaghan was blind.

Unless . . . she did have a phone number for Sid, even though Troon was way out of either of their service areas.

She’d only seen Sid once since they’d come back from Fahraya. He’d taken a knife to his chest, but Troon were tough and, after a highly dramatic “death scene,” he bounced back within a few weeks. He made an unannounced visit to let everyone know he was okay and then, she assumed, he’d headed back to Troon.

Meaghan hadn’t heard that he was in town, so it was a long shot, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He picked up on the second ring.

“La Meg!” he cooed. “How’s my favorite ass-kicker?”

“Where are you?”

“At your house.”

“What are you doing there?” she asked, surprised.

“Your brother sent me an SOS. He thinks he might be gay.”

“Oh, hell. How’d he contact you?” Russ had no magical power that Meaghan was aware of.

“A special little hex bag Natalie whipped up for him for emergencies. He gave it a little squeeze, said the magic words, and poof! Here I am.”

“Poof? You can materialize like the witches?”

“All right, you got me. We got here right after you talked to Russ. I hitched a lift with John. We were headed your way already. Speaking of John . . . you might want to get home. He’s kinda hot to see you. Somebody’s been messing with the love magic, am I right?”

At the mention of John, Meaghan felt her face grow hot. “I’m not sure seeing John right now would be a good idea. I think Marnie did a love charm on Jhoro that’s gone viral somehow.”

“So I hear the J-Man is playing with girls now? Good for him. I told him he needs to stay away from guys while he’s grieving. All he’ll do is try to find a new Finn and that never works.”

“Um, yes, it appears he’s bisexual.”

“
Bi
sexual? Honey, that boy is omnisexual.” He giggled. “Trust me on this. I have personal experience.”

“Sid. You didn’t.”

“I did.” Sid sighed, then giggled. “During my last visit. When you were at work and Russ was off doing . . . whatever it is he does. That was a night—well, technically an afternoon
—
to remember. Those Fahrayan guys are . . . wow. You know.”

“No, Sid, I don’t know. What do you know about love charms?”

“You and John haven’t,” his voice dropped to whisper, “
done it yet
? What are you waiting for? How many years has it been?”

In Fahraya, during a fit of anger at John, Meaghan had disclosed to Sid how very long it had been since she’d had sex. “Sid, I . . . we . . . this is not the time to talk about this. We have a crisis.”

Sid sighed. “Meggy, this is Eldrich. There’s always a crisis. Think how much calmer you’d be dealing with this mess if you got laid first. John would be thrilled to help you out with that.”

“Oh. My. God.” Meaghan face grew so hot she felt like she was about to burst into flames. “I am not having this conversation with you. How the hell do we stop this thing?”

“You’re not the only woman who’s got her eye on John,” Sid said, concern in his voice. “Don’t wait too long.”

“Sid,” she said through gritted teeth, “the love spell. Are you affected? What do you think about Marnie?”

“Lovely girl. Of all the witches circling, I’m glad he picked her.”

“You’re not jealous that she’s with Jhoro?”

“Jealousy’s a human thing. Relax, Meg, I’m not hexed. John, however—”

“Sid,” she said, trying to control her anger.
But it’s not really anger, is it,
the sensible voice whispered.
It’s fear. Why are you so scared to get close to him? “
Drop it. This isn’t about me and John. How do we fix this mess?”

“Fine,” he said oozing exasperation. “First, we find Marnie and Jhoro and get her to tell us the specific spell she cast. Then we figure out what’s amping the magic up and try to shut it down. But in the meantime, we need a better idea how this is affecting people.”

“Natalie claims she’s the only one who really loves him,” Meaghan said, “and that Marnie’s only using him. Kady called Marnie a slut but expressed no specific opinions on Jhoro.”

“And your straight brother’s all gay for Jhoro while John only has eyes for you.” Sid paused a moment. “Please don’t yell at me.”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” she snapped. Before Sid could respond, she added, “Sally and Nate over at Eldrich Brew are on the verge of divorce.”

“They both want him?”

“No, only Sally. Nate’s really jealous.”

Sid hissed. “Oh, shit. I was hoping we were only getting the lovey-dovey. If there’s a jealousy component, this could get bloody real fast.”

“No kidding.” Meaghan needed to get home and search Matthew’s files to see if he’d ever dealt with something like this, but the last thing she wanted to do right now was be around John. Her resolve to wait until his sobriety was stronger was fragile at best. If he kissed her again, she wasn’t sure she could say no.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing,
the sensible voice chimed in again.

Sometimes Meaghan really hated her lawyerly ability to argue both sides, particularly when she was arguing with herself.

Meaghan wanted to ask Sid about Owen Finnerty, but it could wait until she saw him. “I need to check in with some folks here to see how they’re being affected and then I’ll head home. Try to keep Russ from proposing to John.”

“John’s in your room, hugging your pillow. I think he’s ready to start without you.”

“Sid,” she warned. “We’re not talking about this.”

“Relax. God, you’re uptight.” Sid giggled again and hung up.