Page 39 of Coven of Corpses

Cody glared. “We graduated together.”

“And yet…” Lucia flashed a tight smile. “Enjoy the talk with your boss.”

He watched her walk away, her stride confident and purposeful. The khaki material of her uniform flattered her shoulders and ass. He wondered briefly if he should just give in and apply to the sheriff’s department himself. Demmy seemed to have a bit of a uniform fetish, so that might be fun.

“Mr.” Shanice paused for emphasis. “Bower.”

“Yep. I know. I’m coming.”

He sighed quietly as he walked down the aisle, passing Jugs who gave him a sympathetic look before he added another box to the shelf.

* * *

Clouds blocked any chance of moonlight when Cody followed Jugs out the employee access door in the back of Bulk & Beyond. The breeze had picked up since he’d arrived, and empty fast food containers and chip bags lay pressed against the tires of his truck. The single LED light on a pole flickered with each gust of wind.

“You heading right home?” Jugs asked.

“Where else would I be going?”

“Well, you said Lucia had more she wanted to talk with you about,” Jugs said. “Didn’t know if you were planning to go by the sheriff’s office.”

“Hell, I’m tired and dirty. I just want to go home.”

“And see your brother and his family?”

“Son of a…” Cody blew out a breath. The thought of a house full of people made him want to sleep in the truck there behind the store. “You’re an ass, you know that?”

“Me? I was just trying to get you ready for what you’re going to find at home.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Drive safe, Bonker.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“See you,” Jugs called over his shoulder and laughed.

“Jerk.”

As he pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward home, he thought about the conversation with Shanice. She’d pretty much laid it all out for him. He was a good worker, but he needed to show up on time and stop slacking off when he was on the clock. She let him know she’d given him more than a few chances lately, and now she was going to have to document his performance issues, starting with the broken items he’d returned to the shelf in the backroom.

The longer he worked at Bulk & Beyond, the better their monster cases looked.

He left Harriettville city limits, Route 118 curving and straightening in the wash of his headlights. The night looked darker and deeper between the trees, a void that seemed to swallow the light itself, matching the hollow feeling expanding in his chest. Cody's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as he wondered about the identity of the witch they'd seen out in the woods.

He had to admit, this latest threat made him nervous in a way that burrowed beneath his usual grumpy bravado. Witches were different from anything they'd gone up against before—not mindless monsters to be dispatched, but thinking, feeling beings making informed choices. A witch was a person with extraordinary power that could be used for good or evil depending on their intentions. It was like holding a loaded gun: it could be used to protect or destroy. Plus, witches looked like everybody else, which made tracking them down all that more difficult. They could be anyone from the barista who made his coffee to the mailman to the neighbor who always waved. So many possibilities amped up his paranoia.

Adding to it all was the fact his grandmother maybe, possibly had also been a witch. This revelation churned within him. Each memory of her now cut differently, refracting light from angles he'd never noticed before. She'd been a constant in his life, a strong guiding force in the man he’d become. But to find out she'd hidden some side of herself from him and the rest of her family had pretty much upended everything he thought he knew about her and himself. The betrayal stung, yet it mingled with a strange sense of kinship that left him confused and hurting. Was her secret shameful or simply private? Was it protection or deception? The questions circled round and round with no way to find a true answer.

He guessed his own family might think the same about him and the "sudden" announcement of his bisexuality. A short, bitter laugh echoed in the truck. What a pair they made—grandmother and grandson, each carrying truths that reshaped family narratives. The irony of how he'd demanded honesty from others while understanding intimately why someone might keep parts of themselves hidden away wasn’t lost on him. His anger at her secrets softened slightly as he remembered the fear in his own heart before coming out, the terror of rejection that had kept him silent for so long.

Good job, Universe, on showing him the other side of the coin.

Unfortunately, all he had to go on to figure out if she had been a witch was memories of her. And the clearest of those were from the last few years when her swiftly evaporating mental state had engulfed her. Those final days haunted him still.

Cody had been with her when she'd passed. It had been early in the morning, around four-thirty, that witching hour when the world feels suspended between yesterday and tomorrow. He'd dragged the recliner she usually occupied over next to the bed and had fallen into an exhausted doze, waking with a sudden start sometime later. When he thought back on it, he guessed it had been a change in her breathing that had brought him around—or perhaps something more intangible, some deeper connection.

Her face had been pale, her parchment-thin skin stretched over cheekbones that had once been rosy with health. Her mouth hung wide open, giving her a graceless look that went against everything she had been in life. She would have hated looking like that. Her eyes remained closed, and her face was pinched as if she were focusing hard on some mental task. Cody had reached for her hand then, its frailty shocking—delicate bones beneath paper-thin skin, cold despite the room's warmth. He'd told her that it was okay to let go, voice breaking on words he wasn't sure he meant, tears hot against his cheeks as his throat constricted with grief.