Jasper leaned back and laughed. “Always quick to the punch! Why don’t you relax a while and enjoy the meal.” He gestured to the lobster. “I helped choose the spices myself, so you know it’s delicious.”
Eric pushed the plate against the wall and lay his arms on the table. “We’re not here for the cuisine.”
Jasper shrugged and sighed. “What a pity. It’s the best in town.” He paused and gave a tug on the collar. “More so because I’m here to protect it.”
Eric nodded at the kitchen door where the dim sound of chaos could still be heard. “You’re not doing your house much good right now.”
Jasper grinned and lifted up one hand. He snapped his fingers and the faint noise from the front room reached a feverish pitch of screams before silence descended.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I looked to the portal. “What just happened?”
Jasper chuckled. “I merely helped everyone cool off by opening up the floors and dropping the crowd into the waters of the bay. Just call it a little bit of ‘love magic.’”
“Maybe you can help us by giving us access to your mistresses,” Eric requested.
Jasper wrinkled his nose. “Why would you want to do that? They’re not as friendly as some of the stories say.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t they supposed to be very unfriendly.”
He tapped the side of his nose. “That’s just my point. They’re even more unfriendly than that. Anyway, why would you want to talk with them?”
“We’re following a scent given us by someone named Harry Skafos. He said he knew someone who could sweet-talk anyone out of their money, and I assumed you might be involved.”
Jasper chuckled. “Good old Harry. An ogre if there ever was one, down to the uneven cut of his gangrene-colored toenails.” I made a mental note not to look at those the next time I met an ogre. He leaned toward us and examined us with a curious eye. “But what’s this about a scent? Has your nose found something it doesn’t agree with?”
Eric pursed his lips. “Murder.”
Jasper grasped the back of the chair in both hands and frowned. “That’s not a scent I would follow if I were you. It leads to prayers and funeral services.”
Eric shook his head. “You might need that prayer for yourself. The trail of bodies led us here.”
Jasper lifted an eyebrow. “A trail of bodies? That’s a little more than one murder. Who were they?”
“A human and a hag, both of them manipulated by someone we need to find, and who may have some need for the olives you’re protecting.”
Jasper studied him for a long moment before he sighed. “I see. So that’s the game, is it?”
Eric studied him with a sharp look. “Do you know who Harry took the olives to?”
Jasper shook his head. “I only woo the ladies; I don’t ask them about their olive business. I can tell you that Harry came here a couple of weeks ago and I helped him get an audience with them. He must have offered them quite a deal because he came out with a small bag in his grubby hand and a big smile on his face.”
“And the women didn’t tell you what he offered?”
Jasper frowned. “No. Even I couldn’t sweet-talk them out of that information.”
A sly smile slipped onto Eric’s lips. “Perhaps I might be able to convince them to talk.”
Jasper lifted his hands in the air and sighed. “Alright but try not to knock out the foundation. I just got it fixed from that last storm.” He climbed to his feet and folded his arms behind his back. “And remember that the ladies don’t like to be disturbed but seeing as you’re an old friend of mine they may not try to bite your heads off. Follow me.”
We stood and Jasper led us to the door through which he’d come. The entrance proved to be an access to the dank basement. The stench of bay water permeated the air and made me wrinkle my nose.
“Sorry for the smell, and watch the water,” Jasper warned us as he grabbed a lit candle from a grotto in the wall. “The leaks are bad enough that they don’t allow electricity down here, not that they need help seeing in the dark, mind you.”
He traipsed down the wooden stairs and I made to follow, but the moldy surface of the first step was as slick as ice and my foot flew out from under me. I yelped as I tumbled forward, but Eric’s arm shot out from behind me and wrapped around my waist. He drew me into the cradle of his arms, and I wrapped my shivering ones around his neck. My heart thumped loudly against his calm one as I pulled myself tight against his chest.
I looked up at him with a sheepish smile. “Nice catch.”
He grinned. “I think so.”
A faint blush touched my cheeks, but I swatted his chest. “Enough flattery. We’ve got a couple of vampires to see, don’t we?”
“And they await you down here,” Jasper called from the bottom of the stairs.
The faint light of his candle illuminated his position at a rightward angle from where we were, and very far down from the top of the stairs. So far, in fact, that we were at sea level by the time we reached the landing where the stairs turned and pointed at the center of the room. The space was cut in half by a large stone wall with a thick wooden door. I looked up at the old thick beams that made up the ceiling and noticed a few tiny tendrils of roots sticking out from the stones at the top of the divider wall.
Jasper stood beside the door and his good humor had vanished. He grasped the old-fashioned ring handle and his eyes flickered between us. “Are you sure you want to see them?”
Eric set me back on my feet and his brilliant yellow eyes glowed softly in the dark. A faint hint of his mask shown over his face. “It’s the best lead we have.”
Jasper sighed and shrugged. “Very well.” He opened the door and offered me the candle. “Good luck.”
I took the candle with quite a bit of trepidation as Jasper bowed his head and retreated. The faint light from the candle flickered as a soft breeze fluttered through the open entrance and swept past us. The air it dragged along smelled of a mixture of mold and lemon juice.
I lifted an eyebrow at Eric. “Why does it smell like someone just seasoned mildew?”
Eric’s eyes scanned the darkness beyond the door. “The lemon juice is used as a repellent for the lesser paranormal creatures like the chef.”
I tried to peer into the black void, but the candlelight reached only a few feet past the thick door frame. The floor was squishy with water and a few of the wispy tendrils I’d noticed above the door hung down from the ceiling like limp cobwebs. They waved in the breeze as though beckoning us to come inside.
A soft, cooing voice came from the darkness. “Come in, little ones.”
The female voice made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Eric’s calm voice brought me out of a rising panic. “Put on your mask.”
I blinked up at him as he stared ahead into the darkness. With my now holding the candle, I could see his face was already covered in his own mask. “Why?”
He tapped the side of his mask. “You’ll be able to see in the dark.”
I nodded and took a deep, even breath. The familiar strange feeling of the mask sliding over my face made me shudder a little. Once the mask was in place I looked around. “I still can’t see anything.”
Eric swung his arm downward in front of my face so close that my nose felt the slightest brush of his hand. I started back and blinked. In that split second the world had changed from darkness to light. Well, not completely light, and not completely dark. It was like looking at artificial light where you knew it wasn’t real, but you didn’t care.
I glared up at him. “Are all these skills acquired by me getting kicked or scared? Or both?”
A smile touched the corners of his lips. “Survival and fear are powerful motivators.”
A shadow to my right made me jump and my heart race, but the familiar golden eyes of the wolf god told me who had crept up on me in the darkness. I clasped my hand over my thumping heart and glared at our ‘boss.’ “Do you always have to sneak up on us like that?”
I think I detected a hint of bemusement in his voice. I have always been here.
“Of course, you have…” I murmured as I returned my attention to Eric.
His gaze lay on the open doorway, and now I saw what he saw. The door opened into a room slightly larger than the one in which we stood. The dirt floor of the room was squishy, and in some places the mud dipped into dark puddles. The walls were of the same stone, but that was hard to tell because they were almost completely covered in moss.
The olive tree by which we’d sat stood in the middle of the room, a jewel in an otherwise pig-sty area. Branches hung low even here, and the thick gnarled limbs dipped down and sank into the mud. Some of the roots, too, stuck out of the trunk at odd angles only to stretch out beyond the trunk and disappear into the muck. The shape gave an effect like a giant spider seated in the middle of the room, waiting in silence for its next victims.
I’d never wished for a roll of paper more in my life.