Free Elven Blood (Imp Book 3) by Debra Dunbar

piercing eyes returned to me. “Greedy,” she pronounced. Yep, that was an understatement. “I will not do this thing for you.”
    “I’ll pay you,” I pleaded.
    “Please?” Michelle intervened. “Wyatt is my friend, and I want him to be safe.”
    “All right,” the aunt muttered. “But that little crossroads demon has to go away and leave me to work in peace.”
    Wyatt walked closer, while the aunt slandered me.
    “I really don’t want this thing,” he told me. “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to do this.”
    “Weak, paltry spirits who cannot even protect their own against the lowest of demons. . .” the aunt raised her voice.
    “You do need this, Wyatt,” I assured him. “What if one comes after you when you’re in the shower, or taking a shit? You can’t have your gun loaded and ready at every moment. This will give you a safe place, and buy you some time if one attacks.”
    “If she stopped cowering under a rock, like vermin, and actually confronted those who would threaten her. . .” the aunt shouted to be heard over our conversation.
    “Okay,” Wyatt conceded. “But I hate the idea that you can’t come inside my house. Leethu is in yours, and now you can’t come into mine. Where can we be together?”
    “The barn,” I suggested. “The Eastside Tavern?”
    “Coward. Miserable, worthless coward, undeserving of the attention of the god she serves.”
    “Fine!” I shouted back. “I got it. The neighbors two miles away don’t need to hear this.”
    “Come on,” Wyatt urged. “Let’s go hide out in your barn while this horrible woman does her thing.”
    “No,” the horrible woman proclaimed. “The worshiper of this cowardly spirit must remain here while I secure his house.”
    Wyatt, my worshiper? I nearly choked in amusement.
    Wyatt gave me a pained look. “Go on,” I told him, still grinning at the aunt’s comment. “It won’t take long, then she’ll leave and we can go curl up in my barn among the saddle pads and feed sacks.”
    It took forever. There was a lot of swaying, chanting, humming and depositing of dust at various spots around Wyatt’s house. Michelle had told me that originally the protection was just on the dwelling, the dust placed in the corners of the building, but she’d asked her aunt to place the barrier further out, for added protection. I kept creeping close, trying to see what was going on. Finally Michelle came out to me and told me I needed to go away, that her aunt had instructed she was to “beat me off with a stick” if I came any closer. So I went back to my house and watched fetish porn with Leethu, waiting for Michelle to call me and have me come out to test the barrier.
    It was almost dawn, and Leethu and I were dozing on the couch when the call finally came. The Succubus had been trapped in my house for far too long, so I coaxed her out to see Wyatt’s wall, promising she could try to seduce the aunt. I had my doubts that she’d be successful.
    “Now that is a spirit worth knowing,” Michelle’s aunt said in admiration upon seeing Leethu. “A minor in the hierarchy of Erzulie Freida, but still powerful.”
    Leethu looked up coyly from downcast eyes and graciously thanked the horrible woman for her flattery while I tested Wyatt’s new barrier. I pounded it with my fists, kicked it, and threw myself against it all around the perimeter, and it held admirably. The woman was a real bitch, but she did know how to make an invisible wall.
    By the time I’d made my way around the other side of Wyatt’s house, Leethu was in close conversation with her, hanging on the woman’s every word and looking up at her respectfully. I watched as she took her hand and ran her fingers caressingly down the aunt’s arm. The woman smiled. It was an alarming sight to see; the smile was absolutely out of place on what I’d assumed was a permanently scowling face.
    “All right, Leethu,” I told her. “Let’s get back before Gregory shows