Wicked Appetite (15 page)

The More Is Better front office was manned by a tastefully dressed older woman. She was at her desk, hard at work painting her nails dark blue, when we walked in.

“We’re looking for Mark,” Diesel said.

“In the back,” she told him, smiling, waving us through without so much as an eyebrow raise that one of us was a monkey. I guess nothing surprises you when you work for a man who owns forty ferrets.

Mark was in the warehouse rearranging his locks, returning them to the original pile. So far as I could see, no one else was in the building. The mint business didn’t seem to be booming.

“How’s it going?” Diesel said as an opener.

“Someone broke in last night and moved my locks.”

Chump change, I thought. Wait until you see your apartment.

Mark shut the backhoe down and glared at Diesel. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

“Has it happened before?”

“Never,” Mark said.

“It looks like Wulf’s work,” Diesel told him.

“Wulf?”

“Gerwulf Grimoire. My age and height. Dresses in black. Looks like he’s down a quart of blood. He’s a really bad guy, and he wants your inheritance.”

“He was here this morning!” Mark said. “Caught me in the office, fixing coffee. Scared the crap out of me. I told him I wasn’t talking about the inheritance, and he put his hand to the coffee machine, and it caught fire.
Whoosh
. Went up in a fireball, and nothing was left but black glass and melted plastic. He said he could do the same to me. Is that true?”

Diesel shrugged. “Hard to say if he could actually melt you.”

“I can’t figure if I’m more scared of Uncle Phil coming at me from his grave or this Gerwulf guy roasting me like the coffee machine.”

“So you didn’t tell him about the inheritance?”

“No.”

Diesel smiled. Friendly. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

“No.”

So much for the smile.

“Call me when you’re ready to talk about the inheritance,” Diesel said, handing Mark a business card. “You haven’t seen the last of Wulf.”

Mark focused on Carl. “What’s with the monkey?”

“We’re not sure,” I told him. “It’s complicated.”

The woman was gone from the front office when we left. Probably, she had no reason to stay after she finished her nails. We loaded ourselves into the Cayenne, and Diesel drove out of the lot.

“Where now?” I asked him.

“Salem.”

“And?”

“He’s at Lenny’s house.”

“Wulf? How do you know?”

“I just know.”

The black Ferrari was at the curb, just as Diesel had predicted. Wulf was standing on the sidewalk by the front of the car. He was wearing a black duster, and his hair was still tied back in a low ponytail. He was watching a guy poking around in the rubble that used to be Lenny’s house. The guy was dressed up like he was straight out of a low-budget Renaissance fair. He was wearing a mustard yellow long-sleeved hoodie under a tunic sort of thing with a coat of arms painted onto the front. A sword was stuck into a leather belt
and scabbard, his scrawny legs were encased in green tights, and he was kicking through the ash in what might have been running shoes but were now unrecognizable. He was in his late twenties, with scraggly orange hair and a body that looked as soft and plump as a fresh-baked dinner roll.

“Steven Hatchet,” Diesel said. “Hard at work for his lord and master.”

“Does Wulf always make his captives dress like that?”

“No. Hatchet’s a Medieval nut. If you take his tunic and tights away, he’ll sit and sulk.”

We parked behind the Ferrari, but Wulf never turned to look.

“Does he know we’re here?” I asked Diesel.

“Yep.”

“Is he happy?”

“Nope.”

We got out of the car and ambled over to Wulf. Carl stayed in the Porsche, his monkey eyes huge and black as he peeped out the window.

“So how’s it going?” Diesel said to Wulf. “How’s Aunt Sophie?”

Wulf turned his head toward Diesel and looked amused but didn’t go so far as a smile. His features were sharper than Diesel’s. Diesel’s eyebrows were fierce, and Wulf’s eyebrows were raven wings. Wulf’s nose was straight, his mouth was not as wide as Diesel’s but oddly sensuous, his skin was ghostly pale.

Hatchet was sifting through ashes in what used to be Lenny’s kitchen. He looked our way and unsheathed his sword. “Sire,” he said, “dost thou need my protection? Are these crude and lowly persons bothersome?”

“Continue your search,” Wulf said, his voice soft, his face devoid of expression. Only the barest whisper of a sigh hinted at his foul mood.

“It would be awkward if he found it while we were both here,” Diesel said to Wulf. “We’d have to wrestle for it.”

“I always won when we were kids,” Wulf said. “I doubt much has changed.”

“
Everything
has changed,” Diesel said.

Wulf considered that and looked away, keeping his focus on Hatchet.

“Where’s Lenny More?” Diesel asked.

“He told me what I needed to know, and I released him.”

“Unharmed?”

“More or less.”

Diesel followed Wulf’s eyes to Hatchet. “Nice minion you’ve got there. What do they call that thing he’s wearing? Is that a tunic?”

“Is there a point to this?” Wulf asked.

“Just hangin’ out,” Diesel said.

Wulf glanced at my hand. “You’re hanging out with a woman wearing my brand.”

“Cows get branded,” Diesel said. “Women, no. And she’s with me.”

“For now, cousin.”

“Forever.”

“We’ll see,” Wulf said.

His eyes locked onto mine, and for a long moment, I was held captive with no clue to his thoughts. What I knew for certain was that I saw power and passion. I stepped back into Diesel, relieved when I felt him pressed into my back, his hand at my waist.

“I should be moving along,” I said, making an effort not to gasp for air, praying my voice wasn’t shaking. “The monkey is waiting.”

Omigod, I thought. Did I just say
the monkey is waiting
to the liege lord of evil? I’m such a dork!

“Methinks a dastardly event occurred here, sire,” Hatchet said, standing in a cloud of soot in the vicinity of Lenny’s dining room. “I fear infidels have sacked the keep.”

“I suppose that would be us,” Diesel said. “We sacked the keep.”

I waved at Hatchet. “Farewell, good knight. Fear not for the infidels.”

“Safe journey, fair lady,” he called back.

“Considerate of you to think of Carl,” Diesel said to me, grinning, his arm draped across my shoulders, moving me toward the Porsche.

“I panicked.”

“It’s okay. The party was over.”

“Do you know what I’d really like? A funnel cake. I went
to a Renaissance fair once, and they had funnel cakes. An apple fritter would be good, too.”

“Later.”

“No. Now. I need it now! I feel weak. I need fried dough.”

“This would be funny if it wasn’t so awful,” Diesel said, opening the car door for me. “You can’t have fried dough. You’ll get fat.”

“I don’t care if I get fat.”

“I have to find a safe place other than my pocket to put the charm,” Diesel said. “Keeping you away from food is turning into a full-time job. And I have no idea where to go to find fried dough.”

“I could find some,” I told him. “Give me your keys. I’ll drive.”

“Not gonna happen.”

I tried to grab the keys out of his hand, but he held them high over my head.

“Give me the keys!”

“Nope.”

I jumped for the keys, but I couldn’t reach them.

“You need to control yourself,” he said.

I clawed at his shirt, trying to get his arm lower. “I could control myself if I had a doughnut.”

He shoved the keys into his jeans pocket. “No more doughnuts.”

“That’s mean. I need food. I can’t think. I’m wasting away.” I plunged my hand into his pocket and fumbled for the keys.

Diesel sucked air. “You keep fondling me like that, and I might have to marry you.”

“I’m not fondling you. I’m looking for the keys!”

“Could you look a little more gently? You’re scaring my boys.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. It’s the most fun I’ve had since I met you.”

I took a step back, and something crunched under my foot. I looked down and saw that it was a gold charm. I carefully picked it up, and it immediately buzzed in my hand and glowed.

“This is it,” I whispered to Diesel. “It’s another bug. It looks like a cockroach.”

We looked back at Wulf and Hatchet. They weren’t paying any attention to us. They didn’t know we’d found the charm. Hatchet was still sifting through the debris.

“Better to be lucky than to be good,” Diesel said. “Let’s roll.”

I buckled myself in and watched Diesel as he pulled the Porsche into traffic. “Is it enough to have two pieces of the inheritance?”

Diesel gave me Shirley’s ladybug. “You tell me. Put the two pieces together in your hand and see if they do anything special.”

I held the ladybug and the cockroach in my hand. They were warm, and they buzzed, but nothing else happened.

“What did you expect?” I asked Diesel. “Is there a black cloud forming over the SUV?”

“No black cloud. Also, no light beacon directing us to the missing piece.”

“I’d rather see a beacon directing us to fried dough.”

“Honey, I’d get you fried dough, but honest to God, I’m afraid you’d explode, and I’d have Lizzy guts all over the car.”

I made a big effort not to groan or sigh or grind my teeth, and I gave the two charms back to him. “Now what?”

“Now we go home and regroup. I’m hoping Mark will leave work, freak out when he sees his apartment, and call me.”

“I’m sort of afraid to go home. I’ll want to eat everything.”

“I won’t let you eat everything.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

Okay, I could relax. Diesel was in control. It would all be okeydokey. No worries. Just sit back and watch the world go by.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Go back.
Go back
.”

Diesel hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “What?”

“You just passed a supermarket! I don’t have enough butter. And I need cereal. I want to make sure I have enough Raisin Bran. I mean, what if I ran out of Raisin Bran in the middle of the night? What would I do?”

Diesel thunked his forehead on the steering wheel. “I
thought there was someone dead on the side of the road. Don’t yell out like that.”

“It felt like an emergency.”

Diesel eased back into traffic. “Raisin Bran is not an emergency.”

“Easy for you to say.”

The Spook Patrol was gone when we parked in front of my house. Probably off getting their gizmo fixed after Diesel pitched it into the road. I checked my mailbox and took out three bills and a letter from a publisher. I read the publisher letter immediately.

“Well?” Diesel asked.

“Another rejection,” I said, returning the letter to its envelope.

“Persistence,” Diesel said.

“Persistence,” I repeated.

Cat 7143 gave Carl the evil eye when we walked through the door, but he didn’t hiss or slash Carl’s chest open, so I figured that was a good sign. Carl played it safe and wrapped himself around Diesel’s leg until we made it to the kitchen, where he could scamper up a cabinet and sit on the top of the refrigerator.

I got my notebook out and turned to the tabbed section that held recipes in progress.

“As long as I have this opportunity at home, I’m going to work on my cookbook,” I told Diesel.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, being that you’re under the influence of Shirley’s glutton charm?”

“I don’t have a choice. My house is sagging.”

I thumbed through a couple pages and settled on biscuits. I wanted a savory biscuit, and I was working at selecting cheese and herbs. I went to the fridge and got milk, plus a pound of butter, a chunk of Vermont cheddar, a chunk of Emmentaler, and a chunk of Gruyère. I hauled a sack of flour out of the pantry and looked at the butter. There was only half a pound.

“What happened to the butter?” I asked Diesel.

“You took it to the pantry with you.”

“Yes, but now there’s only half a pound.”

Diesel’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. “Your face is greasy. Looks to me like you scarfed down the butter.”

“You said you wouldn’t let me eat everything!”

“You were sneaky. You ate in the pantry.”

I went back to the refrigerator for more butter, but there wasn’t any more.