Witchy Sour (The Magic & Mixology Mystery Series Book 2) (18 page)

Hours later, the Rangers finally left. In their wake, the cool calmness of the night turned into a black void—a scary, lonely place that had me jumping at every cricket chirp and stick crackle. The body had been removed and the spotlights turned off, but even then, sleep didn’t come, just as Gus had predicted.

The only Ranger who didn’t leave was X. He insisted on staying at the bungalow and keeping watch, despite my best attempts at protesting. Eventually I gave in and pulled him into the kitchen where we shared a cup of coffee and some somber silence. I was too wired, too tired to talk, too exhausted to feel any emotions.

I didn’t remember walking up to bed or undressing, but I must have done it because the next thing I knew, light was streaming through my windows and I was tucked safe in my bed.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept uninterrupted. I secretly thought that Gus loved to wake me abruptly from my dreams by shouting as loud as physically possible from the bottom of the staircase. Speaking of, where was Gus?

A sudden memory of offering Ranger X the couch downstairs hit me then, and I realized that Gus had probably shown up this morning ready to shout up the staircase as usual, but Ranger X had likely demanded I be left alone. I sighed. As much as I had insisted that Ranger X didn’t have to stay over, I had to admit, it felt nice to know someone had my back.

“How on earth did you not tell us?” a familiar voice chided. Poppy poked her head up from the side of my bed, and I leapt up so hard I nearly smacked my head on the ceiling. “You kept it a secret from us, how dare you!”

I clutched my hands to my chest. “What are you doing here? You just about gave me a heart attack. And how did you get in?”

“Well, we had to climb in the window, seeing how you had a surprise guest staying over downstairs.”

“We?”

“Hi,” Zin said with a wave, popping up from the other side of the bed. “I’m here too.”

“What are you guys doing here?”

“We came by to check on you. Poppy didn’t see you setting up shop on her way to work at the supply store this morning, so we poked our heads in to see if you were around.”

“We were quite surprised to see X sitting in your kitchen drinking a cup of coffee—”

“—with a definitely ‘slept in’ couch and blanket set up over in the corner.”

Poppy waggled her eyebrows. “Why’d you send him down to the couch without you? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to cuddle you in the morning? At least on a first date.”

“We didn’t do anything!” I said. “It wasn’t a date.”

Poppy and Zin shared a look, rolling their eyes at one another.

“What are the kids calling it these days?” Poppy asked. “Hanky-panky? Tickle the pickle? Hide the—”

“Tickle the pickle?” Zin said with a snort. “If that’s the best you can do, you really have to start dating. Nobody says that anymore.”

“Okay, you should talk, Miss Wannabe Ranger.”

“There wasn’t any date,” I said, mostly to break up the argument. I felt a tiny bit of guilt not admitting the full story. Though we’d been desperately referring to what we had as a non-date, everything about the kiss we’d shared had felt real.

“I see how it is,” Poppy said. “I make one date with Hettie, and I miss all the fun.”

“Why did you sneak through my window this morning?” I grumbled. “That’s a bigger problem.”

“No way, José,” Poppy said. “We’re your cousins and your best girlfriends. We do things like that for each other.”

“I’m not hanging around climbing through your bedroom windows.”

“That’s because we don’t have men sleeping over downstairs. Men that we’re keeping a secret from our best girlfriends,” she said pointedly.

“That’s not the only reason we stopped over,” Zin said, casting a glance over to Poppy. “There’s one more thing. We need some help.”

“With what?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s nothing,” Poppy said dismissively. “And Lily knows about the problem anyway. Just deal with it and stop complaining, Zin.”

“Deal with what?” I looked between the two. “Someone tell me what’s going on here.”

“Poppy is hiccupping like crazy,” Zin said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s loud, and it smells like a rotten fish slept with a chicken and they had rotten fish eggs. It goes on, and on, and on, and she can’t stop!”

“It’s not that bad,” Poppy said, waving a hand in front of her face and stifling an untimely hiccup. “Really, it’s minor.”

Zin shook her head, and then looked to me with a desperate expression on her face. “Can you please fix her?”

“Is this a side effect of the Vamp Vites running low?” I asked.

“Maybe.” Poppy looked sheepish. “I’ve never had anything like it before. I can’t seem to stop.”

She hiccupped again, as if emphasizing her point. The smell was so noxious I had to dip my nose into my nightgown and breathe into the freshly laundered fabric to block the scent.

Zin rapidly fanned her face, her eyebrows knitting in disgust. “Do you see what I mean?”

“Wow,” I said. “That is definitely a problem.”

“Now we know why Poppy doesn’t have men sleeping over,” Zin said. “She can’t even share a house with us. Hettie threatened to kick her out this morning if she couldn’t stop hiccupping.”

“I’ve never had this before.” Poppy covered her mouth with her hand. “This is weird. Make it stop, Lily.”

“Have you ever had low levels of your Vamp Vites before?” I asked. “Are you only taking half of your dosage?”

“I’m down to a quarter dose per day,” she said softly. “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m starting to get scared. What happens if you can’t find the ingredient you need? Are you sure Gus has no idea where the last Mixologist secured it from?”

“No, I asked him twice. He has no clue.” I waited a beat. “But there is one person who may know a solution. I’m going to talk to him this morning, but before I do, it’s my turn to tell you guys a story.”

“You’ve been holding out on us!” Zin said too loudly. “You and Ranger X are a thing.”

“We’re not a thing, but we did have dinner together last night. As friends. Except, we had an interesting walk home.”

“You kissed!”

I halfheartedly denied it, but the blush on my cheeks gave me away.

Poppy pointed at me. “I knew it!”

Dodging the question, I filled the girls in on everything from seeing Gus conversing with his former classmates, to learning that Gus was a Black Ribbon wizard, to finding a man’s body washed up on shore. I left out the kiss, only because the girls already looked shell-shocked at everything that had happened, and I didn’t want to add another iron to the fire.

“When you two peeked downstairs, did you find Gus?” I asked, finishing up the story. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”

Poppy shook her head. “If Gus had been here, things wouldn’t have been so odd. It was mostly suspicious that Ranger X was hanging downstairs by himself.”

“We thought that you and Ranger X might have requested some alone time.” Zin winked. “We couldn’t think of any other reason that Gus would stay away. He loves that storeroom.”

“I told you, X and I are not a thing,” I said. “But if you want to keep teasing me about it, then let me bring up the fact that Gus went on a date with your mother last night.” I swiveled to face Poppy and raised my eyebrows. She turned white, and I gave a half smile. “That’s what I thought.”

“We’ll agree to tone down our teasing if you stop mentioning that tidbit,” Poppy said, glancing nonchalantly at her nails. “Enough dating talk. Where’s Gus?”

Chapter 17

“Hey,” I said as I made my way down the stairs a few minutes later. “How’d you sleep?”

Ranger X smiled at me over a cup of black coffee, his gaze somewhat tender, compared to the fierce expression he’d worn after discovering the body last night. “I’m fine, I can sleep anywhere. What about you?”

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Not awesome, but I’m not sure that awesome could be expected after the day I had.”

“I made coffee.” Ranger X stood up and moved toward the coffee pot. “Have a seat. Mimsey whirled in here a moment ago shouting about breakfast.”

My eyes fell on the table where he’d brought my most favorite mug in from the outdoor bar and had it waiting for me. My heart melted at the thoughtfulness behind the gesture. As he stood and reached for the coffee pot, I waved him off. “Thank you. I can take it from here.”

“Let me pour you a cup,” he said, sounding so proud of the fact that he’d managed to brew a proper pot of coffee that I found myself sitting and saying thank you without argument. He looked up anxiously as steam rose from the top of my mug. “How is it?”

I took a sip, the coffee brew as dark as the devil and as bitter as a lemon, but I managed a smile. “This is delicious.”

“Really? I didn’t know how many beans to use,” Ranger X said nervously. “Are you sure I didn’t go overboard?”

I forced one more sip of the concoction down my throat. “Really brilliant. Thank you.”

The smile that bloomed on his lips at my approval made every second of drinking the pile of sludge worth it. “Oh, I’m glad. I know you need your coffee. Gus says so, at least.”

Internally, I sighed. Ranger X paid attention to my little quirks. He remembered things people said about me. He made the effort to keep me safe, make me comfortable, and tell me the truth. For a Ranger who could never marry and wasn’t interested in a relationship, he would make a darn good boyfriend. Shame.

“Thanks for staying last night,” I said. “I really appreciate it. I know...I know you could’ve gone with your men to look for the murderer, but instead you stayed here.”

“I would never have left you like that,” he said softly, our eyes locking over the curl of steam reaching for the ceiling. “I’ll always be here when you need me.”

“I know. It makes all the difference. I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep without you down here.”

“You look tired.”

“I am tired, but two hours of shut-eye is better than nothing.” We shared a quiet smile, the late morning more peaceful than usual, as if the wake of the crime had cleared all activity away.

“Eggs?” Mimsey called. “Who wants eggs?”

Ranger X looked to me. “Would you like some?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Still feeling a bit queasy from last night.”

“You really need to eat,” he said. “You didn’t sleep, you probably burned through all of your calories, and you need strength. Have some eggs.”

A loud noise sounded overhead before I could agree. It sounded suspiciously like two pairs of footsteps. Ranger X raised an eyebrow first at the ceiling, and then at me.

“That’s nothing,” I said quickly. “But sure, I’ll have some eggs. A lot of eggs.”

Still giving me skeptical expressions, he stopped lecturing me about eating after I fixed him with my most innocent stare. When he turned to give Mimsey our orders, I shot a murderous glare through the ceiling, wishing I had the power to freeze my cousins in their tracks. Unfortunately, I didn’t know a spell for that.

Poppy and Zin had agreed to wait upstairs in my room until I could clear out the downstairs long enough for them to slip out the front door unnoticed. Turned out,
leaving
through the window was a lot harder than coming in, and neither of them felt particularly keen on explaining to Mimsey why they’d snuck into their cousin’s bedroom. However, judging by the sounds of the conveniently timed footsteps above, Poppy still wanted to put in a breakfast order.

“Was Gus planning on coming back last night?” Ranger X asked. “I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t keep me abreast of his schedule, believe it or not.”

Ranger X laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, though it does surprise me that he’s not around by now.”

Mimsey swept into the room with two plates, one in each hand, dropping them heartily on the table. “Eat,” she instructed before sweeping right back out of the room.

“We’re keeping things quiet,” Ranger X said, dipping his head low and taking a bite of the eggs. His voice was barely audible over the light crashing of the waves. “Only the Rangers know about the murder. The fewer people involved, the better. We don’t want to cause a wave of panic to spread through the islanders.”

“Because he was a Black Ribbon wizard?”

“That’s one part of it.”

“After all this time, I spoke with two Black Ribbon wizards in the same day. Can that be a coincidence?”

Ranger X took another bite of eggs. “I don’t particularly believe in coincidences.”

“Me neither.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad coincidence. We don’t know that Gus is involved with things, let alone the wrong side of things, and we shouldn’t jump to hasty conclusions.”

“Then where is he?” I leaned forward, my shoulders pressing against the table, my voice a hiss. “If he’s the only other Black Ribbon wizard, shouldn’t he be here helping us figure this out? Why did he disappear?”

“I can’t answer those questions right now, but I’m having my men look into it as we speak.”

“Eat, you two.” Mimsey poked her head into the storeroom. “Too much whispering and not enough egg swallowing.”

I forked an egg for show, but as soon as Mimsey resumed her cooking in the other room, I set it back down. “We don’t have time to sit here eating eggs.”

“We don’t know anything is wrong,” Ranger X said firmly. “Gus may waltz in at any moment. If he doesn’t, we’ll just trace his last steps...”

Ranger X trailed off as we met each other’s gaze, both of us realizing we had Gus’s last steps cooking eggs right next door. At once, we both called out “Mimsey!”

“What is it?” Mimsey appeared again in the doorway. “You almost made me burn the toast, and we all know Gus hates burnt toast. Where is that man, by the way?”

Ranger X and I shared a quick glance before I turned back to my aunt. “He’s not with you?”

Her face turned the shade of a blooming rose. “Me? What? Never,” she spluttered. “What do you think I am, a hooligan? I don’t let men sleep over on first dates.”

Ranger X and I shifted awkwardly in our seats while Mimsey eyed us judgmentally.