Flint Lock (Witches of Karma #10) (6 page)

“I’ll set up a payment plan for you,” I said, I tried to keep my voice kind, but firm.

I ran the card number she gave me, for about half of the amount owed. It was still a large chunk of cash. From the tone of Grace’s voice, I had a feeling that Mr. Jake Barnes wasn’t going to forget to pay the vet again any time soon.

Good.

I put the payment into the computer. It gave me some grim sort of satisfaction to see the ready-cash amount slide cautiously into the green.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t near enough.

I clicked on the name of the next big-time offender, and picked up the phone.

WIN

I
locked the clinic door with the same mingling emotions of relief and regret that I always felt. I loved my work. I loved being able to help animals and, to a lesser degree, people. Sometimes, though, I felt like my work was going to bury me alive. At least I was done for the day, barring any more emergency calls.

I was so tired. I stretched out my aching back and yawned hugely. I’d been on my feet all day—doing the work that should have been balanced between a couple vets and some veterinary assistants. Instead, it had all been on me.

Flint looked up at my movement. He murmured something into the phone, and hung up with a strangely decisive air. He stood up, eyeing me seriously.

“What is it?” I asked. “Did you look at the books or something?” I was only teasing, though my books were nothing to laugh about. I couldn’t think of anything else that might account for that particular expression on his face.

“Yes,” he said, leaning his hands across the counter above his desk. “I did look over your records.”

I winced. He must think I was completely incompetent. “Yeah, I know. My accounts are running a little low. I need to work a few extra nights, if I’m going to make rent.”

His eyebrows rose at the words ‘a little low’.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “Can you come over here?” He gestured to the seat in front of the computer.

I walked around the desk. Flint shifted to the side freeing the chair for me to sit down. Perched in the chair, with him looming over me, I felt like a child in the principal’s office. I fought the urge to swing my legs.

In such close proximity, I could feel the warmth of his body, standing behind me. He had taken the time to shower at some point, and the fruity scent of my body wash was a strange counterpoint to the musky masculinity that was his own scent.

His arm leaned past me, dotted lightly with find, dark hairs. It was a muscular arm, wiry and strong. It wasn’t the arm of someone who had spent years in an alcoholic stupor.

I cleared my throat. My mouth felt dry. I dragged my eyes away from his arm and focused on the computer in front of me. “Okay. What did you want to show me?”

He leaned past me, drawing even closer. Warmth radiated from his arm and sank into me, with the scent of hazelnuts and fall growing stronger with his proximity. How could a man smell that decadent? My mouth went from being dry to watering.

Flint pressed a button, pulling my bank account onto the screen.

I winced, but obediently looked. I didn’t need him to tell me just how awful my accounts looked these days. I spent a worrying amount of time every day obsessing about the growing red number—the number that foretold my doom.

“Wait,” I whispered, stunned by what I saw. That couldn’t be right. The account in front of me was full of pending payments. “What happened?” I cranked my head back to stare at him. “What did you do?”

“Nothing that you shouldn’t have been doing all along,” he said, his tone was serious, not scolding, which I appreciated. “I called some of your clients and asked them to pay their bills.” He clicked to another screen. “Now, here are the payment plans that I set up for those that couldn’t pay all of their balance at once. The computer will alert you when a payment is due. All you have to do is call, or print out and invoice and send it to them. I collected email addresses from almost everyone, so you can keep in contact with your customers that way.”

I thought my jaw might be picking up dust bunnies from the floor.

I was in the green. Not just in the green, but I might actually be able to make payments that I’d been putting off for practically forever.

It took me a moment to process that.

I jumped up and threw my arms around him, squeezing him as tightly as I could. I couldn’t help myself. He had literally just saved me. Which, I supposed, made us equal, considering I had saved his life, too.

Flint turned to stone in my arms. I didn’t think he even drew a breath. After a moment, I felt him lift one of his hands. It hovered over my hair, before he yanked it back. He let himself relax slightly, though he didn’t lift his arms to hug me back.

Not for the first time, I wondered what was on his mind. I breathed in the warm hazelnut scent of his skin through his shirt, fighting the urge to rub my nose in it.

I heard him swallow.

Apparently, I’d been hanging out with too many dogs and not enough good-looking men, because I wanted to stand up on my tiptoes and lick him there, in the hollow of his neck where his pulse fluttered.

I made to move away from him.

His hands gripped my upper arms hard, to the point of pain.

“Ow,” I complained. “That hurts. Ease up, will you?”

I looked up and had a brief nanosecond to realize that I was dealing with the demon, and not Flint any more.

Before I could even react, he lifted me straight into the air, and threw me like a ragdoll against the wall on the other side of the room.

The back of my head struck the corner of the wall, where it turned into the hallway, making my vision black out for a moment. My back was the other point of impact—thankfully, I hadn’t even had time to tense my body, before he threw me. Otherwise, I would have been in trouble.

I winced as I tried to move. Well, I would have been in worse trouble, anyway. I waggled one finger experimentally. My nerve ended shrieked in protest. Already my muscles were seizing up.

I was distracted from my muzzy, pain-filled musings, by the huge rushing form of Flint. He leapt over the entire desk, counter and all, and came toward me. His body moved with a menacing grace.

There was nothing of the man present in that movement.

The inhuman black of his eyes, as he drew closer, made my skin pop out in gooseflesh. They were flat and empty of anything but pure malice. His features were terrifying—not because they were twisted, but because they, too were completely blank.

I ducked away just as his hand reached out to snatch me.

Injured or not, there was an advantage to being short at times like this. I was quick and could squeeze through spaces that the much larger Flint—or whatever demon was currently possessing his body—could manage.

My breath hissed in my chest as I moved.

I tried to tell myself that I’d been hurt worse, coming off of horses. It wasn’t so bad. I’d fallen dozens of times. It was true, but it didn’t make my back protest any less. It wanted ice and rest, and here I was, scrambling away from a psychopathic, demon-possessed piece of hot man flesh.

I needed to get out more.

Flint lunged for me. I ducked around the corner of the desk, just under the reach of his arms, and scrambled as fast as my legs could carry me down the hallway.

I grasped the handle of the door to the surgery and yanked it open. I slammed it shut behind me. I tried to throw the lock, but I wasn’t sure if it clicked into place or not. The thundering of my heart was too loud to pick out anything as subtle as a ‘click’. I hoped it was locked.

But, I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

I bolted towards the barn like any good homing pigeon. It made sense that that was the first place my rattled brain provided. After all, the barn had been my safe refuge through all the hardships and heartaches I’d suffered through all my life.

It could serve as my refuge one more time.

The barn was empty of everything but the ghosts of memories. I ran past the empty stalls, which were already covered with cobwebs, thanks to some particularly industrious spiders. They shifted and waved with the wind of my passage—silent, ghostly banners in the deepening gloom.

I yanked on the line that pulled down the flight of stairs that led to the attic space—more ladder-like than stairs, actually. They came down with a creaking protest. I was sure that anyone for miles would be able to hear the sound.

I bit my lip and peered over my shoulder for any signs of Flint.

There was no hint of him, or his demon, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t lurking somewhere in the shadows, watching me.

I shivered at the thought.

I climbed up the stairs and pulled them back up—pulling in the chord for good measure, so no one would be able to follow me.

That was the plan, at least.

Unless the demon gave Flint superpowers, he wasn’t going to get up here any time soon.

Not that I was ignoring that possibility.

Still, I crawled behind discarded saddles and brushes, half-opened boxes blossoming with an embarrassment of show ribbons and other memorabilia from my former life. I pushed a large, heavy trunk out of the way and slipped through the small door that my work revealed.

I’d only been in the room one time before. I was surprised that I even remembered that it existed.

I closed the door behind me. This time, I was sure that the lock slid home. It was an ancient lock, made out of wrought iron. The key itself had a knotted pattern reminiscent of Celtic knot work.

The key was cool and heavy in my hand, as I yanked it out of the lock.

The last owner had brought me up here during my tour of the place. She explained that the room I now stood in was, according to local legend, the workshop of an old witch, who had come down from Salem.

I wasn’t sure if she was supposedly one of the Salem witches, or if this had come later. The timeframe hadn’t been important at that moment. Whatever the case, she had set up shop in this tiny, hidden room in the attic of the barn.

The key itself, was supposed to carry a protective charm.

I sure hoped it was working.

The room still smelled like a witch’s workspace, both strange and familiar.

Ancient strands of lavender and other herbs hung from the rafters, sad and faded like the books strewn across the rickety table and thrown willy-nilly onto a leaning, faded bookcase.

There were pots of all sizes, shapes, and colors everywhere, though they were all made of that heavy stoneware that my mother was always paying a fortune for. Some were cracked with age, but others looked like they might be intact and still full of whatever their former mistress had created.

I would have to get a closer look later.

Maybe it was the lavender and mint that calmed the frantic pumping of my heart. I reached up and broke a stem off of one of the herbs I didn’t recognize in the gloomy darkness. The stem snapped, awakening a wave of the heady aroma of rosemary, strong and pungent, even after all this time.

I rubbed the needles between my fingers and held them under my nose, drinking in the piney, herbaceous scent that always carried with it an image of my own favorite witch—my grandmother—baking bread with cheese and rosemary baked into the dough.

It was the scent of home and safety.

The next thing I saw, in my explorations, looked like a set of giant dandelions. The soft globes were about the size of my head, with the fluff still miraculously intact.

It wasn’t until I stepped closer, that I realized they were, in fact, artichokes—fully budded and ready to shed their fluffy interior. I brushed my fingers gently across the bristly surface, careful not to break off any of the fine fibers of thistledown.

The little room had no windows that I could see, which explained how the plants were in such good condition after all this time. I shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all, but the darkness was a friendly kind of cover—a protector, not a hunter.

I felt safe.

There was no evident glow, but my eyes grew used to the dim. The longer I stayed in the room, the easier it was for me to see my surroundings.

I crossed the room to finger through the books that the witch—or someone else—had left behind. The first two appeared to be farm diaries of some sort—long columns of what was planted where, and how many lambs had been born in April. I looked them over with mild curiosity.

The third book was written in a much different hand. The ink, despite being kept in this dark environment, was starting to turn brown. The paper was brittle and water-damaged.

The handwriting itself was narrow and hard to read. It reminded me of the way my grandmother wrote down her favorite recipes. It was handwriting from a different era—a time when neat cursive had been part of any educated person’s learning.