“Ellie, the sword was blessed to fight demons.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Oh, shit.”
“She took several pictures of the sword. And she says she has something she thinks I’ll want to see.”
I fingered the gold band on my right middle finger. “What is it?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“And you want to go see it?”
“If you’re open to it. I won’t go without you. I’d be sick with worry the entire time I was gone.” He pulled me back down to him and placed a sweet kiss on my lips. “And I thought I’d check on my house. I haven’t been back in over a month. You’ll get to see where I live, and I can pack up most of my things so we can start renting the place out. Maybe we can stop and see Myra too.”
I only hoped Myra would want to see me. “That sounds like a good idea.”
His hand resumed its previous task on my breast. “So we’ll go?”
“I’ll have to get off work.”
“If your boss won’t let you off, then quit.”
“David.”
His mouth replaced his hand as his fingers glided over my abdomen and between my legs, making me squirm. “Promise one way or the other that you’ll get off work.”
“You fight dirty.” But he didn’t have to convince me. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from going to Chapel Hill this weekend. If Allison had seen a sword capable of killing demons, I needed to figure out how to get it. And if I had to quit my job to go, maybe that was the catalyst I needed to get me out the door of the New Moon for good.
“When it comes to your safety, I’ll use all my resources to protect you.” Then he proceeded to show me how talented some of his resources were.
Long after David fell asleep, I lay awake in his arms. My mind returned once again to the old woman’s premonition, and a feeling of dread weighed down my limbs and kept my eyes open late into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
“You can have Saturday off over my dead body,” Phoebe, my new boss, said, brushing past me and heading into the back room.
I stood in the middle of the dining room of the New Moon ten minutes before we opened, wondering how that could actually be arranged. Phoebe and I had butted heads ever since I showed up two minutes late for our first mandatory staff meeting right before the reopening of the restaurant. While Marlena, my old boss, had believed in firm authority, she’d also possessed a heart. Something Phoebe Willington seemed to be without.
A sudden wave of grief and guilt washed over me. The two emotions were usually hand in hand when I thought about my old boss, who had also been my friend. She’d died because of me, because I’d refused to side with Okeus.
Now Marlena’s husband was a widower and her three children were motherless. The only thing I could possibly do to make things right was to make Kanim, the bastard spirit who had killed her, pay. Only I hadn’t seen Okeus’s messenger spirit since Collin opened the gate at our ceremony, and I didn’t know where to look. Collin had given me a map that documented the sanctuaries of a dozen Croatan spirits, along with the gate to hell—a location with which I was all too familiar. But there was no mention of the wind gods, Okeus and Ahone, or either of their messengers. David and I had visited at least half the marked sites, but always during the day. They were difficult to find since the landmarks had all changed, not that we could get too aggressive anyway. No sense flushing them out if I didn’t have the means to permanently destroy them on my own. Perhaps that would all change if we could manage to secure this sword.
I followed Phoebe into the back, my voice firm. “Look, Phoebe, I know it’s short notice—”
She turned to me with blazing eyes. “You’re damn right it’s short notice. Not to mention it’s on the weekend. You already have Sunday off.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
She shook her head. “You already have special privileges. No one else gets away with only working day shifts.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You made me work last night after I worked all day.”
“And that’s because Nina quit. It was a special circumstance.”
“That seems to happen every week. And whose fault is that, Phoebe? Maybe if you were nicer, your employees would stick around for longer.”
She put both hands on her hips. “If people bothered to do their jobs, they might keep them. And as for the answer to your question . . .” She lifted her eyebrows, her eyes bugging out like a pug’s. “It’s a firm no.”
I reached for the knot that tied my apron behind my back. “Then I quit.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’m bluffing?”
“I don’t care if you are or not.” I pulled the apron over my head and spiked it onto the floor. “I’ve worked my ass off for this job, but dealing with your attitude just isn’t worth it.” I grabbed my purse off the desk and headed for the back door.
“Fine!” she huffed, throwing her hands into the air. “You don’t have to work the night shift anymore. Ever.”
“No shit, I don’t,” I said. “Because I just quit.”
I stormed out the back door and walked until I got to the parking lot of my old apartment, sucking in deep breaths.
What had I done?
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed my best friend, Claire.