Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,167

me looking up at—

“What the hell is that?” I asked, trying to get my eyes to focus on something that was upside down and freaky and way too close.

“No, no, no, get back!” Augustine was yelling from inside a tumbled mass of couture. “Don’t approach!”

“I didn’t,” I told him.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” he snarled, flailing around. Only to have the rack collapse onto his head.

That caused some more drama, but I barely noticed because I was looking at—

I didn’t know what I was looking at.

It was small, somewhat shriveled, and mostly bald. There were a few silky strands of long, white hair here and there, blowing in the draft from a vent. Most of them were sprouting out of a lumpy little head, but a few were coming from a small, wizened face. So I supposed I was looking at a male, but couldn’t really be sure.

The face wasn’t particularly prepossessing, with a cute little button nose but odd bumps under the skin, like it was thinking about growing warts but hadn’t made up its mind. And a mouth of mostly missing teeth, although the few that were left were white and shiny. But I barely noticed all that, because the eyes—the eyes were lovely, I thought, staring into huge, purplish orbs with golden striations radiating through them. They looked like twin stars set in a violet sky, like sunrise and sunset all in one, and were glowing so brightly out of the little face that I could barely see it anymore.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, because they were.

The tiny creature smiled gently at me.

And then he clocked me over the head with a broom handle, and the world went swimmy.

“Son of a bitch!” I said, holding my now throbbing head and trying to ward off subsequent blows, only there weren’t any. Probably because my hassock with the soul of a Doberman had knocked whatever-it-was to the floor and was trying to savage it, only it didn’t have any teeth. It did have a good bit of heft and hard little feet and swinging tassels that kept hitting its prey in the face, however, obscuring its view.

Which is why the batty little thing didn’t see me roll to my feet and snatch away the broom. Of course, I didn’t use it. I didn’t do anything at all except spare myself future head trauma, but you’d never know it. The creature stopped wrestling the furniture and huddled before me in fear, old, age-spotted hands curled over its misshapen noggin.

I stared from it to the broom, which I wasn’t even brandishing menacingly, wondering what the hell, before Augustine jerked it away from me.

And then tossed it aside, booted away my tasseled defender, and gathered up the tiny old whatever-it-was gently into his arms. And stood there glaring at me from over top of its head, like I was the aggressor! I just stood there for a moment, swaying, my head throbbing, and finally reached tilt.

I turned around and started out the door, when a long-fingered hand grabbed my arm. “You don’t want to know what’s going on?”

“No.”

So, of course, he proceeded to tell me.

“They were imprisoning him! I didn’t have a choice!”

I sighed, knowing I’d regret this, and turned back around.

“Who were?”

“The damned witches!”

I swear my heart iced over. “What. Witches?”

“Don’t look at me like that! This is your fault! You wouldn’t tell me, or I wouldn’t have had to eavesdrop—”

Fuck.

“—and follow the girls back to where you bought that dress in the first place—”

Fuck.

“—and find him laboring in some kind of third-world sweatshop—”

FUCK.

“—so, of course, I had to get him out—”

“You stole him from the covens? No wonder they came after me!”

Augustine brushed it away. “They were doing that anyway, that’s how I got him out—in the ruckus your representatives were throwing up. I got away clean,” he assured me, like that made it better. “Nobody saw me—”

“Put. Him. Back!”

“Not. A. Chance!”

“Augustine!”

“You don’t even know who he is yet!”

“I don’t want to know!”

“Well, you’re going to. This is—”

I held up a finger. “First: is it dangerous?”

“He,” Augustine snapped, “and no. You scared him!”

“My apologies.” My head throbbed some more. “Second: is it something I need to deal with?”

“He, and no! This has nothing to do with you!”

“Great. Third: get it—him—out of here before Marco finds out. And don’t let the witches know you took him, that you live here, or that you have anything to do with me!”

I shook off his grip and shut the door.

For a moment, I just stayed there,