The Witches of Bacchus: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Joey Finch Book 4) by Peter Woods

Author:Peter Woods [Woods, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922728111
Publisher: Stingray Press
Published: 2023-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

We sat around the dinner table. Mick the Mokoi and Detective Devapriya had brought in a small desk and placed it at the end of the table so we could all fit, while her parents, Dilshan and Manjula, entered the room bearing homemade pizzas, then disappeared to bring in more until a total of six pizzas sat on the table.

“They’ve been dying to use their brick oven,” Devapriya told me from across the table.

Her mother clicked her tongue. “If you visited more than once every two years, we would get more use out of it. Even your brother makes sure to visit every few months. At least you finally brought home a boy.”

She nodded at Mick, who grinned back at the detective’s mother.

Manjula Devapriya was a sturdy woman. Short and stocky, she had a strength about her, both physical and of character, that made me think the detective took after her mum more than her dad. Manjula pointed at me and said, “You’re too skinny. Eat.”

I obeyed, taking a slice of pepperoni pizza that tasted so good I didn’t mind that it burned my mouth. Although the chilli flakes were a surprise and left me gasping for my water.

Dilshan asked if I was a fan of cricket and seemed disappointed when I said ‘no’. However, Alex, being the most normal out of all of us, happily engaged the man on all things sport, and that end of the table devolved into a debate over the strengths and weaknesses of their respective national teams. The rest of us, despite being crammed together, ate in relative silence. Detective Devapriya obviously didn’t want her parents to know about all the weird shit she was involved in, and none of us felt inclined to talk about it.

I glanced around, checking for the hundredth time that no one had recent gashes on their arms. I’m not an expert on rituals or divine sacrifices, and I assumed it was still possible for the maenads to bring someone under their control by different means or by drawing blood in another fashion, but I felt that if anyone under this roof was secretly after Madeleine, Miss Blackthorne would have sniffed them out by now. And I would have bet my life on Miss Blackthorne not being under their control. In actuality, I was already betting my life on that.

Devapriya and Mick conversed in low voices. Mick’s constant big, white smile contrasting vividly against his dark skin, while Devapriya’s expression seemed even more restrained than usual. Mick was part of the Mokoi, one of the three clans of river folk that live along the rivers coursing through Sydney. We’d met the year before when there had been a spot of trouble between Sydney’s river folk and the ocean-dwelling Selkies – otherwise known as ‘sea elves’, or ‘those pretentious fishy bastards’. A dispute over a murdered ambassador had culminated in a battle between two gods in the middle of Sydney Harbour. Mick had been there to help me pluck drowning people from the water.

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