by Elsa Jade
And here was Marcia, overbearing chamber lady and likely drunk, pouring out her heart to him like it was another whiskey sour. Except he didn’t drink on the job.
“Marcia,” he tried again. “I’m flattered, but—”
“So you’ll help me? Oh, thank you, thank you! I’m going to do this proposal big, bigger than the ponderosas on Mesa Diablo!”
Proposal? Despite the bright sun, his blood froze.
“Next club day, I’ll pop the question in front of everyone,” she went on. “You can say, ‘Oh, we need some basil for the tequila.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea.’ And I’ll reach into the basil and the ring will be right there!”
A ring?! Ben blanched. “Marcia, I don’t—”
“Yes, yes, you can say ‘I don’t know how that got here.’ And I’ll say ‘It grew out of our love.’” She clasped her hands to her chest, dragging down the wilting elastic another half inch. “And then everyone will cry.”
Well, he certainly felt like crying.
“It’ll be so beautiful,” she sniffed. “Even more beautiful than this garden, which, let’s be honest, needs a little more time. But we can’t wait. The summer fades too fast.”
His throat seized, preventing him for rejecting her outright. Because she wasn’t wrong. Thor’s hopeless commands had come from the same place of desperation. Ben scraped one hand over his head, squeegeeing away a fresh slick of nervous sweat. It’d been so easy for him to deny his king and tease Gin for her impatience, because he’d been playing the easygoing bachelor bro bear with no real obligations beyond watering some plants. Meanwhile, Mac was all but mated, and Thor was halfway to rogue. And now here was this proposal—which he’d thought would be the culmination of his garden club—hanging in front of him like a bear trap. “Marcia,” he tried one last time. “Isn’t this kind of…rushed?”
She touched the hummingbird mint, releasing a bubblegum perfume, and the hectic edge to her voice eased. “It’s not sudden. We’ve just been hiding it.” When she glanced up at him, the tequila glassiness in her eyes gathered at the corners in not-quite-shed tears. “In a small town like this, I wasn’t sure our love would be welcomed.”
He stiffened. As far as he’d known, Marcia wasn’t a confidant of the shifter community. While relationships between shifters and non were sanctioned, exposing the oblivious to their secrets was considered dangerous precedent. How had she discovered them?
“But Elaine wants to stay here and she believes our neighbors will see our love and accept us for who we are.”
Considering almost half of Angels Rest and the surrounding wildlands was shifters, of course they’d accept— “Wait, what? Elaine?” The other chamber lady in the gardening club was so quiet he barely ever noticed her.
“It was her idea to take over the chamber so we could work together closely and everyone would see all the good we do. I wasn’t so sure, but now…” Marcia blinked away the tears. “If she could convince cynical ol’ me, she can win over anyone. Since she got the city to give up the land for this garden, this is definitely where I want to propose to her, so we can live the rest of our life together in the sun, starting right now.”
Aw hell, now he was crying. “Marcia, I think it will be beautiful.” He gave her a hug and she laughed weepily in his arms. “What do you think about me postponing the next meeting until a little later in the day? I could hide some solar lanterns in the garden, and as the sun is going down, the lights will glow and you can ask her. And if you like, I can see if Dena Begay would sing something. She has a wonderful voice.” As did most coyote shifters.
Marcia nodded enthusiastically, tugging up her blouse which their hug had knocked askew. “Dena sang at the Christmas gathering and made my spine tingle it was sooooo beautiful.” The exaggerated ooooo sounded a bit like a coyote, enough to make Ben grin. “It’d be perfect for Elaine. Thank you.”
They hashed out a few more details and then she hurried off, leaving him alone in the garden. He put his hands on his hips and gazed across the stubby plants.
Well, at least the ladies’ gardening club had gotten someone mated.
***
After spending the day making sachets until she thought she’d never get the perfume out of her nose, Gin waited until nightfall to go hunting for the bear king.
Maybe it was a dumb idea to look for him in the dark, but she felt stronger with the shadows around her.
Also, it was just so freaking hot out.
For no good reason, she found herself dressing up a little. Thor wasn’t really royalty, she argued with herself, but still, it gave her some sort of confidence to choose her best black A-line dress and strappy heels. She slicked on perfect winged eyeliner with her first try, which boded well for the confrontation. What hope did blunt old bear claws have against razor-sharp winged liner?
Leaving her room, she crept down the stairs, keeping her heels off the hardwood treads. Aster slept like the hard-playing boy/bear cub he was, but she didn’t want to risk waking her sisters and explaining where she was going dressed like an anime assassin. She made it to the front door and was about to let herself out when a faint sob drifted like a ghost through the Victorian. She stilled, listening hard, remembering Rita’s reluctant confession about her recent difficulties.
But as she followed the sound, the choked sob led her not back upstairs to her elder sister’s bedroom but down the main hall to the small formal dining room that Brandy had claimed for her own rather than bunking with Aster once Max started visiting.
Gin tapped lightly at the heavy wooden panel of the pocket door, then a little louder when there was no answer. If she busted in on her sister and Mac in the throes of passion, it would scar her for life. But those didn’t sound like good sobs. “Bry?”
“Go away.” Brandy’s normally cheerful voice was garbled.
Okay, even if Mac was there, Gin needed to make sure her sister was okay. “I’m coming in,” she warned. “Don’t be naked.”
“I’m never going to be naked again,” Brandy wailed softly as Gin nudged open the door.
“Uh, I don’t know what that means, but…” Gin peeped through the crack into the soft yellow glow of the tableside lamp.
“It’s Mac.”
At her sister’s miserable confession, anger sharper than her eyeliner went through Gin, shocking her with its vehemence, as if it had been lurking inside her, waiting to emerge. “What did he do?” She would hurt him if he’d done anything to her sister or her nephew. Actually, making Brandy cry was bad enough. “What’s wrong?”
This was why it was better to keep her heart as her own. She’d never cried for a man, not the father who walked out before she could even make a memory of him, not for the high school boys who couldn’t see her as anything more than one of the weird Wick girls. Life could be dark—no one knew that better than an acolyte of the shadow circle—but it would be insanity to court that particular pain when she could have all of the fleeting pleasures of the flesh with a passing lover or two.
She’d never been so tempted to unleash the truly dark forces of the shadow as she was watching Brandy huddled with a pillow in her lap, her cinnamon-brown eyes awash in tears.
Gin joined her sister on the twin bed, which was almost too big for the narrow room and still way too small for an enamored couple… Aaaaand she really wished she hadn’t just thought about what this mattress had been going through lately. “Tell me what he did. I might not be able to frogger him, but I can make life in the swamp seem better than the righteous fury I’ll pour down on him.”
Brandy swiped at her tears. “He wants to set a date,” she hiccupped.
Gin frowned. “A date for what?”
“The wedding.” Brandy burst into fresh sobs.
That…probably didn’t warrant a froggering. But the unwarranted wrath still churned in Gin, though she tried to tamp it down. “How dare he,” she sniped.
“But I told him I want to wait.”
“Why?” She
couldn’t believe she was asking. She championed the circle’s rituals of unfettered freedom for its followers, something the rest of the world wasn’t always willing to grant women. Seeing her sister’s misery only reinforced that idea. And yet… “I kind of thought marriage was inevitable for you two. He’s Aster’s father, and he claims to be your fated mate.” She pursed her lips, feeling as if she had to squeeze out the next words. “Not to mention, I think you might sorta love him or something.”
“I dooooo. And that’s the problem.”
Gin sighed. “Witches be crazy,” she murmured.
“What if he stops loving me?” Brandy’s whisper was hoarse with all the tears still obviously pent up inside her. “What if he leaves like…like our father did? What if Aster has to grow up alone, like we did? Or…what if I’m wrong about what I feel, the way Mom ended up leaving us behind?”
With a shrug, Gin slumped back. “It’s a crapshoot, that’s for sure.”
Her sister gave her a wounded look. “Oh, thanks a lot.”
Gin flashed her a grin. “What are little sisters for?” Then she sobered. “But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. So why the tears?”
Brandy huffed out a watery snort. “That’s the shadow way, isn’t it? Forcing us to see what we’d rather not admit.”
“You’re a brilliant accountant, Bry. I’m guessing you’ve already run these numbers yourself, a dozen times probably. So what are you really afraid of?”
Brandy looked down at the pillow strangled in her grasp. “That things are going too good with Mac,” she confessed. “That I’m too lucky, when I know that luck is just statistics that haven’t balanced out yet. That this is all a dream.”
Gin reached over and pinched her thigh, making her sister squeal. “Guess you’re awake.”
“Ouch.” Brandy kicked out with un-Brandy-like vigor. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
“So is loving Mac,” Gin pointed out, more gently than she’d pinched.
Brandy subsided, letting the pillow fall away as she dashed the last of the tears from her eyes. “When did you get so wise?”
Gin forced a smile. About the same time she realized she’d never want to twist this way about anyone. She’d gone through her emo goth stage in high school, and while she’d kept the practical color palette, she was good and done with the pointless angst. “From the mouths of babes,” she said instead. “You should wait to set a date if you want to. You know—you know—Mac will wait for you forever.”
That last word reverberated between them, and where it made Gin want to break out in hives, Brandy sagged back against the wall, a small, secret smile curving the corner of her mouth.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “He would.” She lifted her gaze to Gin’s, the soft brown glinting with conviction. “And even if forever doesn’t last, I’d still have known this love, and I’ll take the risk.”
Gin didn’t have a reply. Rita had always projected the confidence of the oldest sister, while she herself had the rebellious brazenness of the youngest. Brandy, who’d had the hardest time as a “weird Wick sister”, had always seemed like the most vulnerable of the three of them, and they’d kept her safely sandwiched between them. But here she was, having a child without the blessing of the circle, a male child at that, and mating to a shapeshifter on top of it all.
Gin lunged across the bed to hug her sister. “If anyone in this whole wide world can truly find their way by following their heart, it’s you.” She bussed Brandy’s cheek and sat back. “If you want to go to Mac tonight, I’ll stay here with Aster and get him ready for his day tomorrow.”
Brandy smiled at her. “You’re the best sister ever. Well, maybe second to Rita”—she ducked when Gin launched a fake-punch at her arm—“but Mac is in Farmington overnight on a big job. That’ll give me a day to come up with something to show him I’m ready.” She wrinkled her nose. “Anyway, it looks like you’re on your way out. Big date with Ben?”
Gin wrinkled her nose back at her sister. “You think I’d waste this eyeliner on a gardener in an apron?”
“On a guy who cooks? Uh yeah.”
Gin licked her finger and made a hash mark in the air to acknowledge that Brandy had scored a point. “Actually, I was going to head over to Gypsy’s. Wanted to thank her for the excellent booze. And maybe get another sample of it.” She gave her sister an exaggerated wink.
Brandy gazed at her, obviously not fooled. “Just…watch out for bears, yeah?”
Another toxic spurt of emotion—anger, jealousy, regret, resentment?—ripped through Gin. “You didn’t watch out. Seems to have gone okay for you.” She forced a smile to soften the needling in her tone.
Judging from Brandy’s surprised blink, she heard it anyway. “I didn’t think you wanted my boring, normal life.”
Gin snorted. “Baby bear boring, sure.” She hopped off the bed and landed with a decisive click of her heels. “You are right where you’re supposed to be, Bry: a good mom, a gonna-be wife, and definitely the best second-of-three sister”—she dodged when Brandy hefted her pillow threateningly—“and I know you always said you only ever wanted to be normal, but really, you’re extraordinary.”
Brandy let the pillow fall. “Dawww. You are so sweet.” She tilted her head. “What did you do with my sister?”
Another snort, and Gin headed for the door. “Since you can’t come with me, I’ll drink your drink at Gypsy’s.”
“Ah. There she is.”
Gin flapped her hand dismissively and eased the pocket door closed behind her.
“Love you, Ginny,” her sister called.
“Love ya too.”
Which was why, even though she’d spent most of her life making sure she was different from her sisters, she’d do everything in her shadow power to make sure they were safe and happy. And if that included skinning the bear king, so be it.
She hijacked Aunt Tilda’s lemon-yellow Volkswagen bus and drove to the edge of town. After parking with the bus’s blunt nose facing the highway (in case she needed to make a quick getaway), she stalked across the rough gravel toward the roadhouse. Since she’d never be so dumb as to try to fight a bear in high heels—uh, meaning she was the one wearing heels, not the bear; the bear, presumably, was just in bare feet—her strappy black sandals were well-designed and not just sexy. She did her stalking like an avenging dark angel in very comfortable shoes. She only had to pick out one tiny tumbleweed from between her toes when she got to the neon sign that turned the night from blue to red and back again.
Lingering heat from the sunbaked sand vied with cool air straight from the stars, swirling restlessly past the vintage roadhouse. Hung along the rambling front porch rail, a string of mostly working Christmas lights shivered in the thump of bass guitar pounding from the butt rock on the jukebox inside. Either the sullen bear king would be drowning his sorrows within, or someone who knew where she could find him would be.
She smiled coyly at the drinkers and smokers lounging on the front porch as she sashayed by. She didn’t know which ones were shifters and which ones weren’t, but it was a roadhouse, so probably all of them were trouble in their own way. One of the men jumped up to get the door for her, even though the heavily scarred pine slab was already open to the night, but she didn’t slow down. When he made a grumbling sound under his breath, she shot him one look and he slunk back to his seat.
Despite the late hour, the place was hopping. A handful of couples and one trio were two-stepping to the music around the edges of the crowd, managing to time their promenade to the hiss of darts across their paths and the crack of balls at the pool table.
A shadow circle witch could appreciate this chaotic energy.
She beelined for the bar, another pine slab even more scarred than the front door. Looking every bit as surly behind the bar as she did at her farmers market table, Gypsy eyed Gin as she poured a round of draft pints for the waitress thrumming her fingers on the battered wood. “What do you want?”
>
The question was pitched somewhere between what would you like to drink? and why are you in my bar? which Gin could appreciate, considering she was here with ulterior motives. “Came for some of your most excellent liquor.”
“What do you want?” Gypsy repeated in a more amiable tone.
Gin tilted her head. “What does Thor Montero like to drink?”
Gypsy shoved the heavy tray down the bar hard enough to make the glasses rattle. “Whatever he wants.”
“I’m not so demanding.” Gin tried for a smile.
The bartender was having none of it. “Is that why you’re toying with sweetie boy Ben?”
So much for playing nice. “Thor had a business proposal for me, and now I have an answer for him. But I’m not sure where to find him.”
Gypsy braced both hands on the bar, the eyes of her tattoos gleaming at Gin with more liveliness than felt appropriate for mere ink. “Seems like if he wanted, he’d have told you where he was.”
Gin coughed in wry disbelief. “Really? He doesn’t seem that way to me.”
After a moment, Gypsy inclined her head, conceding the point. “Haven’t seen him around lately. Which usually means he’s up on the mesa.” Her eyes glinted brighter than the ink. “Which is no place for someone like you.”
Gin wondered if the bartender meant because she was a woman, a witch, or not a shifter. Not that it really mattered. “The mesa seems vast enough for everyone.”
“But too dark, even for you.”
“I like to walk at night. And anyway, the moon will be up soon.”
They had a little staring contest that Gin was determined to win. At the pool table, someone miscued and swore loudly. Neither of them glanced away. A glass broke—prelude to a shanking?—and they kept their gazes locked. A crooning, melancholy version of Sweet Gypsy Rose broke up the dancers and brought them streaming toward the bar—
Gypsy arrowed her glare to the jukebox. “Goddammit, you know I hate that song.”