Page 47 of Last Call at the Doghouse

Anything was possible. Sonny might really care for Mary and they’d run off. With the book. It was possible she was wrong about everything and Mary was simply out for a walk. Yeah, right. She could toss out that optimistic theory.

Mary might be dead. Armi had barely known Carlton and his death haunted her. Mary… she loved Mary. She was a good friend who’d been there during the hard times and the good. No matter what she’d done, the love remained.

If Mary was with Sonny, if she was helping him now, then she was on the wrong side of things. It was possible she didn’t understand what was going on, that she was an innocent in all of this. Sonny had been a powerful wizard as a teenager and was likely more so now. Had he manipulated the naive widow? Poisoned her against her friends?

When the time came, would Mary choose her friend or her lover? Who was she kidding? Mary had already made that choice.

“Where would they go?” Armi asked, whispering to herself.

Mitch answered, “I don’t have any idea, but I know who to ask.”

Armi scanned the far edges of the parking lot, hoping, praying to catch a glimpse of her friend. All was quiet. “Helen, dammit.”

“Yep,” Mitch grumbled as he took her arm and they headed back toward The Doghouse. “Helen, dammit.”

Armi had come here looking for a fresh start, a new life. She’d found both, and so had Mary. It had been fun, aggravating, different. A bar, for goodness sake. A lover who shifted into a dog. She’d loved her new life and she’d hated it, often at the same time.

Did she still have a life ahead of her in The Doghouse? Would she ever return to this place she was trying so desperately to make her own, or was this literally… last call…

CHAPTER 15

Mary expected Sonny to turn right in Eufaula and head to Mystic Springs, but he didn’t. He turned left, then left again, and they ended up in an old neighborhood of run-down houses on large lots. Lush, overgrown yards stretched between the houses. She’d never had that kind of space, not in her home growing up and not in the house she’d shared with Danny.

As they drove down the street she noticed that a few of the yards were well tended. Still, most of the others had been left alone so that the grass and weeds and bushes had taken over. Sonny pulled into the driveway of a dark house with one of the overgrown yards.

He exited, clutching the red book she’d retrieved for him and slamming the driver’s side car door much more forcefully than was necessary. She waited a few seconds, but Sonny didn’t come around to open her door. He was angry with her; mad that she hadn’t obeyed his command to stay behind.

If she’d stayed behind he would’ve left her there. No more late-night visits, no more overpowering sensations of love, and no more orgasms that threatened to make her entire body fly apart.

She wouldn’t be left behind again. Danny had left her; Sonny would not.

Mary jumped out of the car and followed Sonny to the front door. “Is this your house?”

“It is.”

“I thought you lived in Mystic Springs.”

“Not for a while now.”

“But you’re staying there. Everything will happen in Mystic Springs, right? I thought you said…”

“Have you ever heard the saying about curiosity killing the cat, dear?”

Had he threatened her and followed the threat with an endearment? He had. But Sonny wouldn’t hurt her, she knew it to the pit of her soul. “I said I’d help you, but in order to help I have to be at least marginally informed, wouldn’t you say?”

The interior of the house, which had an old-fashioned layout with a large foyer, a circular staircase, and several small rooms she could see from the entryway, was in better shape than the yard or the exterior. It was almost magical how different it was, but then Sonny was magical, in so many ways. She could easily imagine living here with him.

Mary moved toward the stairs and looked up, picturing the two of them walking down arm in arm, dressed for a fine dinner party or an evening out. She could imagine making love to Sonny in every room of this big house. He might be angry now but that wouldn’t last. He would love her, as she loved him. He would need her.

The life she wanted, needed, unfolded in her mind, and she smiled. “What’s so special about that book, anyway?” she asked.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

She nodded, her eyes still on the stairway.

“Inside these covers lie the instructions for your friend Armi to rebuild the protective shield over Mystic Springs, to pull the magic back, to rob the rest of the world from its potential.”

“You wouldn’t like that,” she said.