LEO woke up staring into the beady black eyes of an American magpie. He wasn’t sure who screeched louder, him or the bird. Either way, not an experience he wished to repeat.
Niamh flitted to the perch near the fireplace, having served her purpose. “Cole ran out to grab breakfast,” she informed him, and wasn’t that absurd? An animal was speaking to him. “He says there’s a clean towel in the bathroom if you want that shower. I can show you where.”
“Thanks.” Leo sat up and stretched slowly, surprised to find himself refreshed. He hadn’t woken the whole night, despite the troubles he’d had all week. Apparently his subconscious felt safe here.
Ugh, he couldn’t believe he’d gone to sleep without his shower. “Bathroom’s upstairs?” he guessed.
Niamh flapped over to the railing. “Follow me.”
As Cole had said, she left him alone once she’d shown him the bathroom. Leo took advantage of some very nice toiletries—he was pretty sure the soap was handmade—and the promised excellent water pressure. The water stayed hot too. Maybe it was magic, he thought with a little laugh.
He was just drying off on a very thick, soft bath mat when he realized he didn’t have any clean clothes.
Fortunately being a nurse had cured him of most of his body shyness. He wrapped the towel around his waist and opened the bathroom door.
And came face-to-face with Cole, who gave him a pained look. “Is accidental casual nudity going to be a thing with you?” But then he grinned to show he was teasing, or maybe he was just surprised he’d managed to get the line out around the curse. Maybe this was part of it loosening. “Follow me, I’m sure I can find something to keep you decent until we can raid your apartment for clothes that actually fit.”
“You read my mind,” Leo said wryly.
Cole waved that off. “Nah, not my trick.”
Leo followed Cole into his bedroom, which was done in soft, soothing blues that felt mature rather than boyish. The bed was missing its quilt—which was probably downstairs on the couch, folded into a neat bundle, where Leo had left it. Cole, Leo noted, slept on the right side. Leo was a left-side sleeper himself.
He really needed to stop looking at the bed, and the barren left-side nightstand.
“Here.” Cole opened a set of double doors into an enormous walk-in closet, which Leo thought was pretty hilarious, because he’d never seen Cole in anything but a T-shirt and jeans, give or take an apron. “Let’s see….”
Cole bestowed Leo with a green T-shirt, this one featuring assorted vegetables and the slogan Lettuce Turnip the Beet, sweatpants that wouldn’t reach Leo’s ankles, Saturday day-of-the-week socks, and a pair of Andrew Christians. Leo could have done without knowing Cole went around wearing fancy underwear beneath his otherwise plain wardrobe. Or at least, he’d have preferred to find out under other circumstances. “Thanks,” he managed.
Cole’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he said, “Oh for fuck’s sake, I’ll be downstairs when you’re done.”
This time Leo couldn’t hold back the laughter.
When he’d dressed and went down to the kitchen, he found Cole swaying as he hummed tunelessly, setting out fruit and yogurt and bagels. “You hungry?”
Leo thought briefly of his aborted midnight snack, and his stomach rumbled.
“Thought so.” Cole gestured to a couple of plates and bowls. “Help yourself.”
Leo did, being extra generous with the yogurt particularly. “So what’s the plan for this morning?”
Cole popped a bagel in the toaster. “Well, I have to open the shop, but I asked Danielle to come in early. Then I figured we’ll check out your apartment, make sure it’s safe. Investigate the source of your weird noise. After that, I guess we’ll see.”
Nodding, Leo spooned yogurt into his mouth. If he didn’t say anything, he could trust his voice not to betray the anxiety he felt at the idea of returning to his apartment. Which was silly. What could happen to him in the light of day, with a trained cursebreaker at his side? Cole wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.
Cole’s bagel popped, and he hot-potatoed it onto a plate and reached for the peanut butter. “Bagel?”
Why not. He deserved six hundred calories of carbs after what he went through yesterday. “Please. Sounds great.”
They met Danielle at the shop at quarter to nine, and Cole unlocked the door. At ten to, they pulled into the lot at Leo’s building.
Leo fidgeted in Cole’s diminutive passenger seat.
Cole turned the car off, but when Leo didn’t move right away, he looked over. “You want me to go in first?”
Surprisingly, Leo did not. He unbuckled his seat belt. He didn’t want Cole going in alone any more than he wanted to do it himself. “No, that’s… I’ll come in.” He tried for a smile.
“That’s the spirit.” Cole got out of the car, and Leo found the courage to follow.
In daylight everything seemed perfectly innocent, even cheerful. The flowers outside the entrance were still in bloom. Leo unlocked the main door and let Cole precede him inside. “I’m on the third floor.”
“No elevator?” Cole teased. “No wonder you’re in such good shape.”
Leo snorted. The stairs didn’t do much, considering he walked up them maybe twice a day, but they did put Cole’s behind at an excellent level for Leo’s viewing. It provided a nice distraction until they reached Leo’s floor and the horrible pit in his stomach opened again, threatening to swallow every iota of joy.
“Right or left?” Cole asked when Leo didn’t move toward either door.
“Right.” Leo reached into his pocket for his keys.
Cole held out his hand. Leo could have kissed him, except of course that he couldn’t. “I’ll get the door,” Cole offered, and then he held out his other hand with the bag of candies.
“Thanks.” Leo picked out another lemon fizzy, touched. Calm washed over him as the flavor burst on his tongue. He nodded at Cole to continue.
The door swung open.
Leo didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Atmospheric ripped curtains or obviously rearranged furniture or some guy chopping a hole in the wall with an ax, then popping his head through to say, “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!”
He didn’t get any of that. Just his apartment, exactly as he’d left it, as far as he could tell. Cole pocketed Leo’s keys as though on autopilot. “Is it all right if I keep my shoes on? I don’t want to take unnecessary risks.”
“I’m not taking mine off. I don’t want to touch things any more than I have to. You’re fine.”
“Great.” Cole turned and looked at the vase sitting on the counter, but he didn’t reach out to touch it. Instead he pulled two pairs of ordinary gardening gloves from his pocket and handed one to Leo. “Put these on, just in case.”
Leo examined them as he did so. “Are they, like, lead-lined or something? Magic-proof?”
Cole smiled. “Sort of. They’re cotton.” He shrugged, then reached for the vase. “Neutralizes curses. Nature’s protector, I guess. A T-shirt won’t stop a curse someone’s hurling at you any more than it would stop a knife or a bullet, but it protects from cursed objects like a T-shirt protects from a sunburn.”
“Huh.” Leo made a mental note to start keeping these in the drawer by the front door instead. “So? Anything?”
Cole lifted the flowers from the vase and held them over the sink to examine them. “Nothing on the flowers. Actually, this is a strange collection. Daffodils—that’s love, luck, and fertility.” He glanced over, a wry smile on his features, but his cheeks were pink. “Someone who knows about your predicament, maybe? And the fern. Protection, health, blah blah blah. And forget-me-nots. True love and memories.” He shook his head, then opened the cupboard over the sink and took down a glass, which he filled with water. He set the flowers inside. “I’d think you have a secret admirer, but I’m pretty sure a secret admirer wouldn’t be able to send you these.”
“So something weird, but not necessarily something dangerous.” Leo fought the urge to fidget.
“Essentially.” Cole turned back to look at the vase, frowning. “This, however….”
Leo took the opportunity to look at it in plain daylight. It was smallish, heavy-looking, maybe made of some kind of leaded glass. “Yeah?”
“This is definitely enchanted.”
Despite the magic candy, Leo’s stomach sank. But Cole was still holding up the vase, examining it in the sunlight, his brow creased. “I swear it looks….”
Leo wanted to prompt him, but Cole set it down again. “Never mind. Ready to continue?”
Continue? “Now what?”
Cole waggled his glove-clad fingers. “Looking for anything else suspicious. We’re gonna toss your apartment. Don’t worry, I’ll let you do the bedroom.”
For a second Leo weighed the pros and cons of searching for cursed objects by himself versus having Cole go through his sex toy drawer. Oh God, he really hoped none of that stuff was cursed. “But how will I know when I find something?”
“Well, it’ll probably be something you haven’t seen before. It’s much easier to plant an object than to steal one, curse it, and put it back.”
That would still mean someone had been inside Leo’s apartment, but he accepted the explanation. “All right. And if I find something suspicious, I’ll just….”
“Whistle?” Cole suggested. “Scream like a toddler? Calmly get my attention?” He shrugged. “Just don’t touch whatever it is with your bare skin. Oh, and beware of dust bunnies,” he added, pulling open a kitchen drawer seemingly at random.
Were dust bunnies a thing? “Why?”
“Hmm? Oh, no reason in particular. I just hate dust.”
Well. All right, then. Armed with just enough knowledge to make him dangerous to dust bunnies, Leo entered his bedroom.
On first glance, nothing seemed out of place. Leo opened the curtains and looked behind them for anything that shouldn’t be there but found nothing. The space under the bed contained no obvious cursed objects, though he did sneeze a few times, prompting Cole to call from the next room, “I warned you about the dust bunnies!” Leo pulled out a few lonely socks and was about to drop them in the laundry hamper when he realized he ought to dump that out too.
Clothes, more clothes, a towel, some spare change he must have had in a pocket. Nothing incriminating. Leo moved on to the nightstand drawers. Lube, condoms, passport—hmm, maybe he should put that somewhere else in case of spills—a couple of old photographs. The bottom drawer was empty; he hadn’t brought much with him when he’d moved.
His closet was clean, aside from another colony of dust bunnies and some dirty clothes that needed to be rehomed. He tossed them in the hamper. And that was most of the bedroom taken care of. He poked his head back out to the living room to find the couch cushions on the floor and Cole on his knees in front of the couch, using his cell phone as a flashlight to peer into the crevices.
Perhaps Leo could be somewhat more thorough. He turned around again and pulled back the covers on the bed. Hell, he might as well put his sheets in the wash too while he was at it. He picked up a pillowcase and shook it to slide the pillow out. But when he reached over to grab the other one—the one he didn’t sleep on—he felt something hard.
“Cole?” Carefully, Leo pulled the pillow and pillowcase apart. His mouth went dry, and his stomach twisted. What the hell…?
Cole appeared in the doorway. “What did you—oh.” He peered over Leo’s shoulder—a neat trick, seeing as he was several inches shorter—and then came around to his side. “Can I?”
Leo nodded, still holding the pillowcase open. Cole reached in.
The object was six or so inches long. At first Leo thought it was a cross. Then Cole turned it over and he saw the face.
His knees wobbled. “What is that?”
“You know what it is.” Cole set it faceup on the bed. “It’s you.”
The tiny doll looked nothing like him. Oh, it had yellow hair—“Flax,” Cole murmured—and blue eyes, and two legs and two arms. But the features were simply glued on a seed pod. “And winter cherry.” He touched the doll’s cheek. “Blackberry thorns. Boneset. Chicory.”
“I need to sit down.” None of that made any sense to him, but it made the hair on his nape stand up. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect on his spine.
Cole wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him out of the bedroom. “Come on. You’re gonna sit on the couch and I’m going to pack your bag.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
“Well, you’re not staying here.” Cole picked up a couch cushion and put it back on the couch, then pushed Leo down on it. “Not if someone else can get in without you knowing, no matter their intentions.”
Leo blinked at him, but Cole had already disappeared back into the bedroom. Leo could hear him opening drawers and pushing hangers around in the closet. “Intentions?”
“Flax. That’s healing, protection. Blackberry too. Boneset, that’s exorcism, drives away evil.” Cole must have found Leo’s overnight bag, because there came the sound of a long zipper opening. “And chicory. Removal of obstacles.”
That sounded… not terrible. “Wait… what?”
“Different signature,” Cole said. A drawer opened, closed.
“So… what does this mean?”
Another zipper sound, and then Cole appeared in the bedroom doorway, Leo’s bag slung over his back. “No idea!” he said. “But whoever made it, it’s not the person who cursed you, and it’s not the person who sent that vase. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Good idea. Leo got up, surprised to find that his knees carried him without any trouble.
They left the apartment, Cole with a bag of garbage to take down to the dumpster and an armful of flowers, Leo with his packed overnight bag. He hoped Cole had remembered his toothbrush and some scrubs. But if not, well, Leo could always go shopping.
On the second-floor landing, they ran into Leo’s across-the-hall neighbor just coming in, sweaty from one of his dog walks. “Hey, Leo.”
“Nate,” Leo managed, thankful for programmed politeness. “How’s it going?”
“Loving life!”
He always was. He was absurdly good-natured.
Leo and Cole continued to the ground floor and let themselves out of the building. Once Cole had tossed the garbage away, he squared his shoulders and said, “So about that noise you heard last night.”
Oh great. “Yeah?”
“Probably nothing. Your neighbor needs some soundproofing. I can help.”
Leo didn’t ask. Cole popped open the trunk and Leo tossed his bag inside. “Now what?”
Cole untucked the flowers from the crook of his elbow. He’d wrapped the vase in Leo’s scrub top from the night before for the trip down the stairs. He brandished the florist’s business card. “Now we’re going to find out what this guy knows.”