The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(23)
“The thought is much appreciated.” I forced a smile. “But I should be on my way now.” Relief flooded over me as I saw Peter crossing the square toward us with a protective look on his face. He was bare chested, with his T-shirt clutched in his right hand.
“My offer to take you to the next Tillandsia still stands,” Tucker said, taking note of Peter’s approach. “Bringing you in would be completing the circle in a way. Your mama always enjoyed it so.” Peter crossed the road and came up beside me. “We could use some fresh blood. You’d both be more than welcome. You and your young man there too.”
“Thank you Mr. Perry, but I don’t think so,” I said, biting my tongue so I wouldn’t say more. I was itching to tell him off.
“Everything good here?” Peter said, his eyes glued on Tucker.
“It all looks good to me.” Tucker looked us both up and down and made that same crooked grin. “Well, I’d better be getting on. You let me know if you reconsider, Mercy.” He sped off without another word.
“What the hell was that all about?” Peter asked, watching as the Mercedes disappeared from sight.
“Tillandsia,” I responded. “Tucker seems to think we’d want to waste our nights drinking with him.”
“Well, he could not be more wrong about that,” Peter said, then turned to face me. He leaned in and surprised me with a kiss. “What are you doing around here?”
To hell with nonchalance, I decided. Here in front of me was a simple, wholesome man who loved me. No strings tying him to anyone else. No ulterior motives. “I missed you, so I came to see you. Is that all right?”
“That is way more than all right,” he responded, his face lighting up with a smile. “Come sit with me.” He took charge of my bike with his right hand and slid his left hand to the small of my back, guiding me gently into the square. He carefully set my bike down under the shade of one of the live oak trees and sat down next to it. “Pull up some turf,” he said, patting the ground next to him. I carefully dropped the backpack of food in between us. “Any news about Ginny’s funeral yet? I’ll try to get off, but the boss said I had to give him a few days’ notice.”
“No, we aren’t sure when her body will be released.”
“I still don’t understand how it could have happened,” he said. “And why your family can’t just do their hocus-pocus to find who did it.” His untroubled acceptance of my family’s powers made me smile. We had grown up together, but even with full knowledge of who my family was, and what they could do, he had never once pulled away from us like most normal people did.
“I am right there with you,” I said. “A few weeks ago, I would have thought it was impossible for anything to harm Ginny. They’ve been trying to track down the murderer, but so far no luck, either for my family or for the police.”
The rest of the crew had found their way to the park, and the men were spilling in around us. “Hey, Pete,” one of them called. “That your dessert?”
“Damn, and all I got was a pudding cup,” another of the guys hooted.
“Can I have a taste, Petey?” a short wiry guy called out.
“Ignore them. Those bastards would give anything to be sitting here with you. And I can’t blame them,” he said, but I could tell from the way he looked at the other men that they were pushing their luck. He noticed the backpack. “You doing a tour today?” he asked.
I opened my backpack and handed him his sandwich. “I brought you lunch,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. Exposed and vulnerable in a way that a few catcalls could never make me.
“Lunch, huh,” he smiled happily. “This really was premeditated, then?”
“Yeah, I guess it was.” An innocent joy washed over him, and on his face I saw real love, not some horrible Hoodoo counterfeit. He deserved the real kind too, and I was determined to try to find it in myself to give to him. And if I couldn’t, I’d just have to find the strength to set him free. I cursed myself for ever going to Jilo. I pushed the thought of her away, only to find my thoughts returning to an equally undesirable person—Tucker. “Tucker told me that my mother was the one who got him involved in Tillandsia,” I said, “Maybe that’s where she met my father.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “What are you thinking?”
“That I might be able to learn something if I take him up on his offer to introduce me to the club. Maybe it would help me figure out who my dad is.”
He was quiet for a moment, his face a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just that I don’t know what went on in the club when your mama was in it. I’m sure it wasn’t anything like the stuff they get up to today, but…” He paused.
“But what?”
“Well I’ve heard talk around the bar. They get up to some pretty wild things in Tillandsia these days. It’s turned into a kind of swingers club.” He looked guilty, as if he’d been forced to tell me there was no such thing as Santa. “You know I love Ellen, and I don’t mean to judge her, but Mercy, Tillandsia is no place for you.”
“But if what you say about Tillandsia is true, and it was like that when my mama was involved, any of the men in the club could be my father, even Tucker Perry.”