The Burning Bush (23 page)

Yet the problem remained that it was odd for two prominent Pureblood families to do an interspecies marriage. MeShack had already explained that Shelly was believed to be a drug addict, which made her a horrible prospect for a potential mate. According to his Shifter gossip, the family had been trying to set her up with anybody who wanted her.

But why did Jacobi’s family want to get rid of him? Why couldn’t he find a nice, wealthy, female Witch to marry?

“Did the file say anything about why Jacobi was a bad catch?” I asked Cassie.

“No.” She shook her head. “I read the whole thing at my house last night, and I didn’t see anything about that.”

“Wait a minute. You took the files home? I don’t remember saying you could read them or take them home.”

“I assumed I could since we’re investigating this together.” She threw me that weird expression again, the one that said,
Stop acting crazy
.

I returned to the file. There was no use explaining to Cassie that she wasn’t my assistant detective or that I wasn’t even a detective. The girl just refused to listen to reason. She’d cut school today and tagged along with me against my will. Every class I went to, she stood outside the door, taking pictures and happily waving at me. Zulu was going to kill her when he found out.

“Are you and Zulu going to go to the Remembrance Day Masquerade Ball?” Cassie asked. “The top people of Santeria will be there. I bet it’ll make MFE look like a stronger organization.”

“A Masquerade Ball? MFE has a lot more to do than put on pretty clothes and masks,” I said. “Lots of Mixies are out of jobs in Shango due to the blood factory bombing. Too many pissed-off broke people sitting around is never a good thing.”

“Well, you’ll never guess who I’m going as,” Cassie declared.

“Who?”

“I’m not telling you until I put the gown on, but you will absolutely love it!”

“The suspense is killing me,” I muttered and continued reading.

“I really, really wish,” Ben loudly said to his mom’s grave, “that Lanore would let me play football.”

Abso-fucking-lutely not!
I sucked my teeth at Ben’s slick little tactic. He knew I usually gave into anything he wanted after we left his mother’s gravesite.
Not this time, buddy.

“MeShack and Zulu both think it would be a great idea, Mommy.” Ben paused as if waiting for me to jump in.

Of course MeShack and Zulu thought him playing football would be great. They both enjoyed putting Ben in harmful situations, arguing that it would make him a man.
He’s not a man. He’s a little boy!
I made a mental note to yell at them both for letting him go on that camping trip last night. They went behind my back and signed the permission slip. When it came to Ben, they were always willing to compromise and unite together.

Bastards!
Anything could have happened—a poisonous snake biting him, Shifters bullying him, or he could have fallen into a huge hole and broken his leg.
Am I the only sane person raising him?

Ben noisily cleared his throat.

“All of my friends are playing football,” Ben whined, still facing his mother’s tombstone.

Cassie nudged me with her elbow and giggled.

“Ben, I think you could get hurt. Most of the players are Shifters.” I studied Jacobi’s medical file. It was two inches thick, and most of it was from his childhood. Wallace had really done an extensive amount of research for me. I’d have to take him to the movies twice and make sure Zulu was there, preferably wearing his tight Captain Habitat shirt.

Ben jumped up from the grass and turned, begging me with those sad almond-shaped eyes. “You’re always saying Mixies can do anything Purebloods can do.”

I groaned.

“Is that what you’ve been telling him Lanore? If that’s true, he has a point.” Cassie put her camera back into her bag.

“MeShack said he’ll go to all of my practices and make sure I don’t get hurt. And Zulu has been teaching me defensive moves. I’ve been practicing. See?” Ben jumped over the bench and then leaped back over it with his eyes closed.

“That’s not football, that’s trying to kill yourself with a bench,” I said. Ben poked a pathetic pair of lips at me.
When does this whiny phase end?

“But MeShack will go with me,” he argued.

I rubbed the area around my brand. “We can try one practice with me there.”

The edges of his lips lowered into a frown. “Couldn’t it just be MeShack or Zulu instead? Please? You always make me wear that weird hat.”

“That helmet is to protect your brain.”

“They make fun of me at school,” Ben whispered.

Cassie covered her mouth. “Can I see this helmet?”

“No,” I said.

Ben’s lips fixed into a deeper, more pitiful pout. His eyes dripped with suffering, threatening to release tears.

“So what do you want, Ben? Do you want to stop wearing the safety helmet or to play football?” I asked.

“Both.” Ben pouted. “Come on, Lanore. I made the honor roll. You said if I did well in school you would let me do more fun things.”

I considered his argument for a few minutes. “This is the deal. You don’t have to wear the safety helmet in class—”

Laughter exploded from Cassie’s lips. “You have him wearing a safety helmet in class?”

“It protects his brain.”
And his class if full of sadistic little Pureblood monsters who like to hurt him as much as possible.
I sighed and raised one finger at Ben. “You can play football if, and only if, you wear the safety helmet during football practice. Plus, MeShack and Zulu both have to be there.”

So if you get hurt, I can kill both of those bastards.

“Yes!” Ben raced back to his mom’s gravesite. “You hear that, Mommy? I’m going to play!”

I went back to reviewing the medical file as Cassie grabbed the papers I’d already read.

“Jacobi’s been in and out of the hospital since he was three.” I skimmed some more sheets. “Broken wrists, fractured arm, et cetera. Either he was clumsy or one of his parents abused him.”

“Just like that.” Cassie shook her head and giggled. “There you go again with your doomful guesses.”

“What?” I scanned another page.

“You always assume the worst. Onyx has to be a hooker. Jacobi must have been abused.” She dropped a folder down on the bench.

“These are significant injuries, and they increased right after his mom died.” I displayed the thick file to her. “I bet you twenty bucks Judge Brass beat him. Look at this. He was admitted into the hospital for severe dehydration ten times by the time he turned eighteen.”

“Well duh! He’s a Fire Witch, they do get easily dehydrated. My sister secretly dated one.” Cassie shrugged. “He would come over to the house whenever my parents went to events. He always carried a jug of water with him.”

“Whatever.” I glanced up and spotted Ben arranging the flowers we’d brought.

He usually did that right before it was time to go. The daisies surrounded pink roses. The yellow roses were always laid in front of his mother’s face, which was carved in stone. Zulu had purchased the gravesite and paid for all the funeral expenses, refusing to show me the bill. Given all Zulu’s spending on Ben and me, I’d decided I needed to do as much work for MFE as possible, anything that would help him out and pay him back for what he’d done for us.

“You and my brother are perfect for each other.” Cassie smiled, making her high cheekbones even more defined. She tucked a few long blond strands behind her ear, exposing a dangling pair of pink heart earrings. “You both have really dark outlooks on the world.”

“That’s not true.” I shoved all of the files into my satchel.

Cassie spread out her arms. “What do you see right now when you look around us?”

I checked out the cemetery. Dark, sea-green grass covered the space like a bushy carpet. Dreary gray stones jutted out of the earth with the names of those who had passed away.

“Lots of dead people,” I replied.

“And what about the flowers growing around the graves?” she asked.

I glanced at the violet and ruby-red daffodils in full bloom. Sunlight hit each petal and caused the raindrops on them from earlier to glimmer.

“And today is such a sunny day.” Cassie grinned, raising her head up to the sky.

I glanced up, studying the different shades of blue trapped between the habitat ceiling bars. “Fine. It’s a nice day.”

“You’re hopeless, just like Zulu.” She stood up and stretched her arms and legs as Ben skipped over to us.

Ben’s eyes held that distant look he always had when we left his mother’s grave. I could never figure out the emotion he hid behind them. I always asked if he was okay or wanted to talk. Every time, he would say he was fine, but still I worried. In fact, I always stressed about him. Taking care of a kid sucked big Shifter balls.

No wonder my dad was high the whole time he raised me.

Cassie bent over and stretched her hamstrings or whatever muscle she thought needed it. It was a Were-cat thing. They were always stretching something.

“Once, I took Zulu to my Yoga Inspiration class. It’s all about changing your outlook, and you learn through different poses,” Cassie said.

“I can’t picture Zulu in a yoga class,” I admitted.

“He showed up wearing army boots and all black. He scared the crap out of my yoga instructor, Yogi Michaels,” Cassie said.

“How did Zulu scare him?” Ben’s eyes lit up with curiosity.

Cassie glanced uncomfortably at me. “Well, Zulu thought my yogi’s hand shouldn’t touch me in certain places when the yogi helped me in poses. So Zulu suggested some new poses for my yogi that were a little . . . different.”

“Different how?” Ben picked up some rocks and tossed them at a tree.

“It’s not important.” I got up and slung my satchel over my shoulder, smiling.

I’m sure the poses that Zulu suggested dealt with pain and lost limbs.

“So where do we go next?” Cassie asked.

“You and Ben will be going back to MFE.” I pointed to Nona at the far end of the cemetery, leaning against her white jeep. She’d changed her red Mohawk to silver and wore a silver top with snakeskin pants.

“Nona, where are Shawn and Rodney?” Ben called out to Nona, asking about her sons, who were close to his age.

“Come on, Lanore. I want to roll with you. I’m your assistant,” Cassie whined, replicating Ben’s annoying tone.

“No way. You have enough info for your high school article. And besides, things are starting to get dangerous.” I thought about Dante and his threats against Ben. I definitely didn’t want Cassie getting on his radar.

“How are things getting dangerous?” She raised her blond eyebrows up, reminding me of Zulu. “What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Is my brother safe?” Her eyes shifted from blue to tiger eyes so quickly that I stepped back. Striped ears poked up through her blond hair.

“Calm down. Your brother is okay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning if you want to hang out with me.” I edged away from her. “I have two morning classes, Supe History and—”

“I want to help you with Onyx’s murder.” She glared at me, her fangs poking down behind her front lips. “And if Zulu is in trouble, I’m fighting with you on that too.”

“No to both.”

“I found the orb.” She held up a furry, clawed finger.

“It was in a box in the closet.”

A growl burst from her throat. Her skin rippled around her crescent moon brand. “This is Were-bullcrap.”

Well, I see that brother and sister both share the same stubborn temper.

I released a long breath. “I’m just going to do the modeling job in Jacobi’s class. It won’t even be fun.”

“Please! Please!” She stood still, but I could tell she wanted to bounce up and down as her eyes immediately shifted back to dark blue.

“No.”

“I have naked pictures of you, and I’m not afraid to use them.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I snarled. “I want those pictures now, with the digital files and any copies.”

“Only if I can go with you to Jacobi’s class.”

“Fuck.”

“I’ll give them to you right now. Everything.”

Groaning, I shook my head and walked off. “Okay. You have to stay outside the class, and no talking to college guys.”

“Deal and deal.”

I halted and faced Cassie to show her I was serious. “No asking Jacobi questions.”

“Deal.” Her ears and fangs disappeared.

“No taking pictures or annoying me, and if it’s dangerous, you leave.”

“Sure.”

I rolled my eyes and headed to Nona. Hopefully, Cassie would listen to half of that.