Blood Magic by Michael La Ronn

Author:Michael La Ronn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Author Level Up LLC

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again: you crazy,” Bo said as we entered my house through the front door.

“I’m not that crazy,” I said.

The alley was still cordoned off by police cars, and sirens were awash behind the house. Folks were sitting on their porches, gathered in the street, waiting for some more action. We had to sit in the car, surveying the street for a few moments before slipping out. On nights like this when I was in the middle of a conflict, I didn’t exactly like parking in the front of the house and advertising my location, but I didn’t have a choice.

At my kitchen table, I emptied the contents of a bag I brought from Joyner’s: a bag of peat moss and bottles for Bo’s odors. We also stopped at a pet shop on the way home and bought half a dozen live crickets. The crickets crawled in a plastic puff bag between a maze of egg carton scraps that the pet shop employee loaded in before sealing the bag.

Bo lugged in a heavy flower pot of dead Venus flytraps and set it gingerly on the table. Some of the brown and white peat in the flower pot spilled out.

“You’re gonna make that demon hella angry,” Bo said. He screwed up his face and looked at the plant.

“That’s the point,” I said.

I took out one of the crickets and walked out to my back porch door. My spider sat on a little web in the eave, staring at me. I stuck the cricket in its web.

“I appreciate your help tonight,” I said. “You did me a good job, as always.”

I stood on the steps holding my bag of crickets and took in the humid night air. Hazel joined me on the step and I gave her a long pet.

“What a night, huh, sweet pea?” I asked.

Dogs didn’t talk back, but they listened. They always had a keen sense of how you were feeling. I always found that it works best to talk to them just like you’d talk to anyone else. Tonight, Hazel wasn’t in much of a listening mood. She yawned in response to my question.

There were still a lot of squad cars in the alley. Too many for my liking. Harris was still among the officers. He stood next to a dumpster, his arms were folded as he talked to what looked like a police captain.

I shook my head. Hell of a job he had to explain why a vampire summoned a demon and blew up his assigned car. Nope, the police force wasn’t for me.

I took a few minutes circling the house, feeding the crickets to my spiders, thanking them for an all-around good job.

The dead can’t technically eat. Bo never gets hungry, and my wallet is thankful for that. But even though The Cluster couldn’t technically eat the crickets, they could absorb the moisture from them, which kept them vibrant for me. Plus, the act of consumption kept their spider predatory instincts intact, which was what I needed them for.

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