by Elsa Jade
“And you want to revive a shadow circle here?” He gazed at her with dawning admiration. Angels Rest wasn’t exactly a hub of startup entrepreneurialism. “By yourself? That’s amazing.”
“Maybe not a whole circle, at least not right away. Just one aspect of it to start with.” She rubbed her palms across her thighs. “Specifically, I’m deconstructing a love charm.”
That jolted a laugh from him. “A love charm? You?”
“Deconstructing, I said.” Her hands flexed, like maybe she was wishing his neck was between her fingers. “And why not me? I could make a love charm if I wanted, even if I don’t have dimples.”
She kept bringing up dimples. Which made him want to smirk. “I imagine roses are an essential part of a love charm.”
“A classic,” she agreed. “That’s why I think the circle would be more accepting if I added notes on your demon rose to my grimoire. Aunt Tilda and the others might question some shadow circle rituals, but they appreciate good scholarship.”
He was interested too. Actually, if he checked his own footnotes, maybe bewitched was a better word. Not by magic or roses, but by her. Sure, that glimpse through the bedroom window had inspired him, but before that, he’d seen how she stood shoulder to shoulder with her sisters even though she was so clearly different from the sunnier Wick girls. Pack and clan bonds were a powerful force among shifters, especially for the bears who’d suffered from the betrayal of their king. Gin Wick might have her own path on the shadow side, but he had no doubt she’d brave the harshest glare and heaviest fire to stand with her family.
His bear chuffed in approval.
“You can have a flower.” He cupped the blossom at its base.
But she laid one hand on his elbow. “Wait. If it’s the only one…”
Even though she wanted to prove her study to the other witches, she was reluctant to take the beauty for herself. He smiled at her. “There’s another flower forming already. See?” He gently parted two leaves to reveal the tight, pale green knot of another bud. “It’ll be open by tomorrow. If it sets seed, I’ll harvest the hip and we’ll see if this cultivar breeds true.”
She curled her fingers around his arm. “Let’s wait until tonight. I’d like to take the flower in moonlight, when the shadow is at its nadir.”
“Sounds good.” He rose smoothly to his feet and brushed his palms together. “I’ll meet you back here at midnight.” He held one hand down to her.
She looked down at his hand then traced up to his face. “Is the Mesa Diablo rose dangerous? Are the stems unbreakably tough?”
He blinked. “No. It’s quite tender, really.”
“Then I probably don’t need an escort, or brute bear strength.”
“I think you called me bro bear, not brute bear,” he reminded her. “But I don’t mind escorting you around the desert at night.” He gave her a sly smile. “Maybe I can dig up some other interesting local flora and fauna for you.”
After another moment’s hesitation, she put her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. “Garden club after-party?”
“Gardening is the party that never quits,” he informed her. “Well, maybe for a month or two in the deepest winter, but even then we are dreaming about spring.”
She didn’t pull away immediately, and her hand—still cool from the hose bath—rested lightly in his. “I hope your new rose makes it through.”
“Oh, you’ll be here to see.” When her fingers tightened in his, he hastily added, “Since I’m sure you’ll want to visit your nephew.”
She tilted her head. “I wouldn’t have guessed that Brandy would be happy in a small town. But being here is the right thing for Aster and his bear.”
“And I think being with my cousin means more to your sister than being in any particular place,” he noted.
This time, Gin’s snort fell somewhere between amused and dismissive. “Yeah, when witches fall, they fall hard.” With a deft twist, the same motion he used to deadhead a rose, she extricated herself from his hold. “That’s why I think my anti-love potion will be much in demand.”
He stiffened. “Wait. Anti-love potion? I thought you said you were just deconstructing it.”
With a flip of her black hem she pivoted and strolled away into the sunset, giving him a little wave over her shoulder. “See you at midnight.”
Chapter 5
Why had she agreed to meet him again?
Gin returned to her aunt’s old Victorian to find the house in the midst of its bedtime ritual for Aster, so she didn’t mention the garden club to her sisters. Then Rita went down to the basement workroom, and Mac came over and disappeared upstairs with Brandy, which left Gin alone to contemplate meeting Ben again.
Yes, it was his flower, and a rare one at that, so asking to borrow it—okay, take it—had been the right thing to do. But she could’ve sneaked over there in the dead of night and stolen the rose with no one the wiser. Her scent was all over the new garden anyway, so not even a clever shifter nose would’ve fingered her for the thief.
In the quiet, she couldn’t help but picture his long, thick fingers. Cupping the lone rose… Aiming the hose over her dirty hands… Clasping her wrist as he lifted her… On a hot, still summer night like this one, the images clung in her brain like dewy droplets of sweat at her temples. Good thing she was finishing up her anti-love potion.
She scowled at herself in the vintage vanity in her bedroom as she slicked her crimson hair up into a ponytail. She’d never been in love with anyone, and she wanted to keep it that way. She and her sisters were living proof—in triplicate—of what happened to a witch who strayed from the circle.
Their mother had fallen hard for the man the circle had chosen for her. But instead of walking away once she was pregnant, she’d tried to hold on. Even in the depths of her infatuation though, she’d known better than to tell him what she was. He’d known she was lying to him about something—not that any man would’ve guessed his lover was a witch—and so he’d been the one to leave.
When Aunt Tilda had tried to explain heartbreak to three bewildered little girls watching their mother pine away, Gin had sworn off Valentine’s Day, pink hearts, and luuuuuurve forever.
And now she was so close to giving other women the power to just say no to love.
At a faint ticking noise through the window, she twisted away from the mirror. What…? The old house seemed to hold its breath as she strode to the open sash.
The next pebble almost beaned her in the forehead when she peered out.
“Psst!” The insistent hiss drew her gaze down.
Ben waved, as if she might’ve missed his big, blond bod otherwise.
She braced her hands on the ledge. “What are you doing?”
“C’mon down, princess.” He reached up one hand dramatically. “The night is bee-ooo-tiful!”
“I’m not coming out the window.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sixteen, and I have a front door.” Turning her back on him, she grabbed a light sweater to throw over her black cami dress before heading down. Not that it was cold, but for some reason her skin was tingling as if just on the verge of goosebumps. Silly skin.
When she stepped out onto the front porch, easing the door closed behind her, Ben was waiting.
“I know how to get to the garden,” she said as she slipped into Brandy’s flipflops. “I made it there by myself just a few hours ago.”
“Night is different from day.” He gestured for her to precede him down the cobblestone walk through the overgrown front yard.
“Um, duh.” When she passed under the big oak, the leaves blocked the porch light and all the lights from the homes next door. Even the stars seemed far away. Well, they were far away, since they were stars, after all. But it wasn’t like she was alone in the darkness—Ben was right behind her. So why did her skin prickle even more?
“It’s very different in Angels Rest,” he reminded her.
Because of the sh
apeshifters, like him.
She quickened her step, flippity floppety.
Out from under the deep shadow of the oak, Ben lengthened his stride to pace her on the sidewalk that fronted all the quiet houses. “Does all shadow magic happen at night?”
“Why are you interested?”
He shrugged at her suspicious tone. “Lots of things interest me. You, for example.”
Dang it, her itchy skin was getting worse. “Me?”
“My cousin and your sister are mates. So we’ll be seeing lots of each other.”
He’d seen all of her through her bedroom window… She could only guess at all of him, although his jeans were snug enough that she figured her guesses weren’t too far off.
She glanced sidelong at him. He’d showered since their earlier garden adventure and sported a white linen shirt, the collarless v-neck more stylish than anything she’d yet seen on him. The scent of bergamot and cedar overlaid a warmer, deeper musk she couldn’t identify, like the way vanilla changed chocolate to something more complex.
But she wasn’t actually interested in herbs or baking or bears. She just needed to get through her ordination.
“So why do you hate love?”
Her stride faltered—flopping instead of flipping—at his blunt assessment. “I don’t hate love,” she blustered. “I just think it’s been granted too much power over our lives. Hence my Anti-Love Potion Number Ninety-Six.”
He choked. “Really?”
“Okay, there weren’t actually ninety-six attempts, but for marketing purposes, I thought it was cute.”
“Why be anti-love at all?” he asked plaintively. “The world needs more love, not less.”
“That’s the hopeless romantic in you talking. Love has caused just as many problems as hate. I have the receipts.”
He sputtered. “Relationships can’t be graphed or reduced to a potion. Love is like a rose living in the desert, wild and unexpected.”
“And that’s exactly what gets people in trouble,” she countered. “Nobody should be a slave to their baser instincts and animal drives.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark.”
“Shifters especially should appreciate an anti-love charm. Imagine if you weren’t controlled by your mating urges every spring.”
He paced in silence at her side for a few strides. “It might ease up some of the pressures in our community,” he admitted. “But the mating call is part of our heritage, part of what we are.”
“Except it doesn’t have to be.”
“If not for the mating season, Mac and Brandy wouldn’t have Aster.”
“They would’ve had the choice to have Aster,” Gin corrected. “Instead they were compelled by basic biology and the magic”—she made sarcastic air quotes around the word—“of pheromones on a sweet spring breeze.”
“Sounds good to me,” he muttered. “So what’s the problem?”
“Well, sometimes, unexpected triplets and a broken heart.” She snapped her jaw closed with a click, surprised that the words had slipped out so easily.
Ben glanced down at her, his expression solemn in the streetlight they passed under. “You’re saying you wouldn’t have been here if your mother hadn’t accidentally fallen in love.”
“No,” she drawled. “My sisters and I wouldn’t be here if not for a pitcher of margaritas, a couple of brandy martinis, half a fifth of gin, and a drunken promise to use birth control next time.” Despite the tightness in her throat, the words kept coming. “But if Mom had an anti-love charm, maybe she wouldn’t have minded so much when Dad left. Maybe her anger at him wouldn’t have soured her feelings for us after he left.”
The old accusation hung for a moment, sharper than she’d intended.
“I’m sorry,” Ben murmured finally. “But I’m not sure you can just tell the heart not to fall in love.”
She straightened. “Of course not. Words are never enough. Which is why my spell also needs herbs, minerals, and triple-distilled vodka.”
He angled them across the empty street toward the town park where the garden plot had been set aside. “Okay, I guess I can believe in vodka for a broken heart. But the rest of it… Does it even work? Is magic…real?”
Gin tilted her head. It was odd to talk about her project with someone who wasn’t a witch. The circle almost never shared with outsiders, although there’d been a few cases where witches had been lost to the circle and their unwitting daughters brought home—much to their shock. And some witches were “out” as alternative medicine healers, renaissance fair performers, online psychics, and whatnot, with the circle hoping to smooth the way for more open representation someday. But Ben had some inkling of magic, not just as a shapeshifter but as a gardener.
“All things have power,” she said. “An ocean wave has big, obvious power, but hard to control, while a tiny, unceasing, targeted drip can wear away a mountain over time. Even one seed has power.” She glanced at him with one eyebrow raised.
Like a good student, he nodded. “The power of the season’s sun and rain compressed into next season’s sleeping bloom.”
“Yes, that magic is everywhere. Power contained or unleashed, power to create bounty and beauty, or—like roots—to undermine and destroy the strongest foundations. The glaring power of full sunlight, or the more subtle power of moonlight that forces us to rely on other senses.”
Skipping ahead of her a step, Ben pivoted to walk backward, facing her. “I do that. I use those other senses. Like, right now I’m doing it.”
She had to smile at his enthusiasm. Weren’t bears bumbling and surly? Probably a bachelor bear needed to be more of a catch. “The circle teaches us to find that power and bind it in our spells.”
His nose wrinkled thoughtfully as he continued to walk backward. She drew a breath to warn him about an upcoming curb, but he stepped up without a hitch. “It’s strange to think about that power as other, like it’s outside you. For us shifters, it’s…just there, always flowing through and around us.”
She gave him a considering look. Bro bear, she’d called him, but there was more going on in that vanilla head than she’d given him credit for.
As far as she knew, the circle didn’t reveal itself to the shifters any more than it did to the rest of the world. Suddenly, that struck her as shortsighted. They had so much in common.
Shifters and witches in general, of course; not her and Ben specifically.
“What’s it like? Shifting, I mean.” She gave him a quick once-over. Though the park had only a couple lamps to mark the center path, his white shirt and blond hair glowed in the nighttime. “You’re big, but you’re not bear big. And you’re not nearly hairy enough in this shape.”
He tilted his head. “You like furries?”
She grinned. “Who doesn’t? But circle magic at least nominally follows universal constants like the conservation of mass-energy. You shifters seem to break all the rules.”
He grinned back. “You sound jealous. Or admiring.”
“Well, physically changing our form is not really something witches have mastered. If I could do that, I’d definitely pass my final exams.”
He shook his head. “Shifters aren’t really breaking any laws of physics. Just because you can’t see the bear right now doesn’t mean it’s not here. That energy is always part of me and when I shift, it becomes the mass.” His blue eyes widened. “I could show you but…”
“But what?” she prodded.
“I’d have to bite you.” His voice dropped an octave, so low that the word thrummed through her. “Make you one of us.”
Knowing there was a beast within his skin, knowing there was a prowling male in search of a mate should’ve alarmed her. Indeed, her heartbeat fluttered, like it was trying to take off without her to follow him. But he was a bear, not a bird.
She snorted. “I got ninety-six problems, but being a bear ain’t one.” Very deliberately, she marched over to the new garden beds. “Speaking of which, we should probably both
be getting home. So, the flower…”
He was still and silent for such a long moment it was as if he’d disappeared on her. She slanted a glance at him, her pulse stuttering again.
He flashed his dimple in an easy smile. “Sure,” he drawled, sauntering forward to stand beside her. He pulled out a mini Maglite from his pocket and aimed the beam at the lone blossom. “Pinch the stem between your fingertips, give it a little twist, and it’ll pop right off.”
In the deeper timbre of his voice, he managed to make the command sound downright dirty. But she wasn’t really the gardening sort, was she? With a dismissive huff under her breath, she crouched and followed his directions to gently decapitate the flower. The tiny blossom fluttered into the palm of her hand, and she caged her fingers around the petals.
She glanced up at him—had he gotten even closer, cuz it seemed like the fly of his jeans was likerightthere—and drew a breath to thank him when an incandescent flash of white burned across her vision.
Almost instantaneously, the thunder clap followed, the echoing boom so startling that she gasped. Not that she could hear herself over the reverberation in her ears.
She jolted and would’ve fallen backward if not for Ben’s steadying grasp on her shoulder. She clasped his forearm. Not just steady—under her fingers, the muscle and bone in his wrist were rock-hard.
But under her thumb, pressed against the thin, hot skin on the inside of his wrist, his pulse raged.
In her half-blinded view, his normally sky-blue eyes staring down at her were suddenly black. A black beyond what even the midnight hour could explain.
She almost cried out again, but then the thunder rolled off, and he was just Ben.
The moment came and went so fast—literally lightning fast—that she almost thought she’d imagined it. Would’ve thought she’d imagined it, if she hadn’t known she’d just glimpsed his bear.
She swallowed against the prickliness in her throat left by her startled cry, trying to settle the erratic pounding of her heart. But before she could say something to discount her unnerved response, he wrapped his long fingers around her wrist and tugged her upright.