by Amy Star
It was quiet still, but that was alright. It was a comfortable sort of quiet. Casey saw no need to break it immediately. Instead, she appreciated the pleasant soreness and reached her arms over her head and stretched her toes towards the foot of the bed until her back cracked. With a content sigh, she went limp again, and the two of them continued to bask in the silence.
Eventually, Atticus wondered, “Want to go see if the chef’s still here and willing to make us dinner?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Casey replied, slowly sitting up. “Shower first, though,” she decided, glancing down to the mess between her legs. It wasn’t really something she wanted to drip across the floor.
Atticus hummed in agreement and began the laborious process of sitting up.
*
It was a brief shower, just for the sake of freshening up. Afterwards, unwilling to muster up the motivation to actually get dressed again, Casey simply pulled her panties back on and then pulled on Atticus’s shirt. She only buttoned the top half of the buttons.
Watching the way the pale fabric clung to her, still damp and only getting more so as her hair dripped dry, Atticus didn’t seem to have any complaints about her theft of his shirt. In fact, he seemed quite content to put a t-shirt on along with his pants from before, and just watch her as she led the way to the kitchen, her hips swaying with each step.
Honestly, it was sort of nice to know she could get that sort of reaction out of him.
It was even nicer to find out that the chef was still around, and though he playfully hemmed and hawed and made a fuss about it, he was still perfectly willing to throw something together for dinner.
And if he was at all curious about why Casey was leaning around the doorway instead of just stepping into the kitchen, he was enough of a gentleman not to bring it up.
*
The night was quiet when Casey and Atticus retreated to his suite for the night. Atticus went to bed before her, as he usually did, leaving Casey to browse on her laptop in his sitting room until she started yawning.
Slowly, carefully, she made her way into his bedroom and quietly crawled into the bed, moving as cautiously as she could so as to avoid waking him up.
He moved as she lay down, flinging an arm over her middle haphazardly, and she froze. It didn’t sound as if he had woken up, though, and she relaxed into the mattress. Slowly, she let her eyes drift shut.
By the time she was asleep, she had almost entirely forgotten about the strange encounter in the woods earlier that day. Or not-quite-encounter, considering how minor it had seemed at the time. Honestly, most of that day already felt as if it had happened days ago. And it all seemed so small. Noises in the woods were normal, right? Sure, she had never really lived in the woods before, but she knew enough to know that they weren’t the perfectly silent bastions of peace and tranquility that they were always shown as in movies.
Whatever she had seen and heard, it was probably nothing to worry about, and with that thought, she let herself drift off.
C HAPTER NINE
Casey woke up reluctantly when she heard something tap at the window, just to pull her pillow over her head and try to drown the noise out. It continued, louder and far more insistent, tapping over and over and over again.
Finally, Atticus stirred and woke up, sitting up on one elbow to look towards the window. He heaved a sigh, his chest shifting against Casey’s back, and with a low, “I’m coming, keep your feathers on,” he sat up, and the mattress rose as he got out of bed.
Casey cracked an eye open to watch as Atticus approached the window, tossed the curtains wide, and opened the window. With a slightly rumpled croak, Lydia stepped inside, her feathers fluffing out slightly as she perched on the windowsill for a moment. She flew over to the bed, landed on the bedframe just long enough to drop something small on the bed, and then hurtled herself towards the bathroom.
Finally, Casey sat up, dragging a hand through her hair and shaking it out of her face. She cocked her head to the side in curiosity as she picked up the object Lydia dropped while Atticus pulled a pair of pants on.
“Good news? Bad news?” she wondered, holding up the ring. It had a simple band, broadening out to wide expanse with a black sigil on a backdrop that looked like diamond set into the top of it. Prodding it briefly revealed the sigil and backdrop could be flipped upside down, making it appear that the ring was just a smooth band of silver. “Ambivalent news?”
Atticus opened his mouth to reply, only for Lydia to breeze out of the bathroom, human-shaped once again and wrapped in a towel, in lieu of any actual clothing (which were, presumably, in the garage). “That’s a hunter’s ring,” she answered, and Atticus scowled at her as she took the wind from his sails.
Atticus held his hand out, and Casey dropped the ring into his palm. He inspected it for a moment, looking slightly bemused, before he pointed out, “Most hunters don’t even wear these anymore. If they do, it usually means they’re trying way too hard, or their families have been hunters for a few generations now and the ring is still being passed down.”
“Is it, like… taboo or something for hunters to wear them now?” Casey wondered, pulling the sheet around herself as she leaned forwards to peer down at the ring.
“Not particularly, but clearly, we recognize them, which means it can make it hard to hide from their actual targets,” Atticus answered dryly.
Casey picked it up, turning the sigil back and forth. “So, a hunter wearing one of these…”
Lydia cleared her throat. “Is either a fresh, baby-faced newbie who we probably don’t need to worry about, or they’ve been at it for a while and probably know about eight ways to kill all of us off the top of their head. And we have no real way of knowing which is which right now.”
“Where’s Branson?” Atticus wondered as Casey dropped the ring back into his hand. He turned away for a moment to drop it into a drawer in his bedside table.
“Taking another lap of the property,” Lydia replied. “Said there was definitely someone here, but he hasn’t run into them before. He’s just making sure they aren’t lurking somewhere.”
Casey stretched out a leg from under the sheet, prodding at the side table with her toes. “Why would the hunter just drop that? I mean, assuming it actually fit, it seems weird that it would just… I don’t know, fall off.”
“Didn’t you mention that you saw something shining?” Atticus wondered. “Whoever they are, they might have realized that you saw their ring and dropped it before they ran off.”
Lydia reached over and prodded at Atticus with two fingers. “Your online following is expanding,” she informed him dryly. “You’ve got crazed fans following you home.”
“And spying on my wife,” he deadpanned, his expression neutral.
“I’m not even involved with this bear stuff,” Casey pouted, falling over backwards on the bed once again.
“You’re involved with this bear,” Lydia pointed out brightly, punching Atticus’s shoulder as she said it. “That’s good enough for them. Were-animals keep that stuff secret usually; no one has any way of knowing whether you’re a bear or some other animal or just a regular human.”
Casey grumbled to herself, folding her arms over her chest beneath the sheet. The logic made sense, but that didn’t mean she had to appreciate it. “So, what now?”
“There isn’t much we can do yet,” Atticus returned, shrugging loosely. “We don’t know who it is. Branson could try to follow the scent, but that could still take a while, and that implies he doesn’t lose the trail.”
“So, there’s someone hunting you like big game, and there’s just… nothing to do about it,” Casey stated blankly. “What the fuck.”
“Nothing to do for the moment,” Atticus replied, though he seemed no more satisfied with the situation than she was. “We’ll figure something out. Assuming we need to. Whoever the hunter is, they may simply decide to drop it. After all, the most likely options were ‘skilled professional’ or ‘hapless wannabe
.’”
Casey grumbled for a moment more before she finally sat up again, hands tightening in the top of the sheet to hold it up. “Alright, fine. But I’m still going to feel super weird about being out and about in the yard after this.”
“Everyone’s going to feel super weird about you being out and about in the yard after this,” Lydia pointed out reasonably. “I mean, I doubt anyone’s going to lock you in the house or anything because that’s super creepy, but don’t get us wrong; no one is actually happy about any of this.”
That was, strangely, a weight off of Casey’s shoulders, knowing that she wasn’t overreacting.
“I’m going to get dressed,” Lydia declared, before she hoisted the towel slightly higher around her chest and sauntered out of the room, her footsteps padding away and down the stairs.
“Not a bad idea,” Atticus remarked, “though I suppose a shower first wouldn’t be remiss.”
“We could shower together,” Casey suggested, smiling coyly. “Being rich as all hell is no excuse to waste water,” she reasoned, one hand rising, palm towards the ceiling as she shrugged.
Atticus found her logic compelling, though they wound up wasting water regardless as their shower wound up being far longer than it needed to be.
*
Casey tugged curtains closed as she walked, venturing from Atticus’s suite to her own wrapped in a towel. She could open the curtains again later, and in the meantime, no one was going to see an inch of her without her clothes on.
In her sitting room, after she was dressed, the towel sitting in a heap on the floor and the room dim with the lights off and the curtains drawn, Casey sat down heavily on the couch and finally took a moment to really think about everything that was going on. There was a hunter—someone clearly dangerous based on intent alone, regardless of their actual skill level—scoping out the house and watching Casey. Someone who wanted Atticus and his kind dead, and was spying on Casey to see where she fit in that.
Thinking about it, she could feel a knot of nausea building in her stomach. She ignored it for the time being. It was no time to start panicking.
She flopped over to the side, sprawling out on the couch and rolling onto her back to stare at the ceiling. A clock ticked in the background. It was peaceful, and she contemplated falling right back to sleep there, but her thoughts were too busy chasing each other in circles, and she knew it would never work.
She scrounged up her phone from a pile of laundry and dialed Jason’s number. He answered on the third ring, grumbling incoherently because he liked to sleep in on his days off, so really, who had the gall to call and wake him up, and his wife would hear about it. If he was even aware of what he was saying, Casey would be incredibly surprised. His entire muffled, mumbled tirade came to an end with an irritated, “Whaaaaaaat?”
“So, I’m being stalked,” Casey informed him. She waited a moment for his spluttering to come to a halt before she confirmed, “Yeah. Stalked.”
“What the fuck?” Jason demanded, sounding considerably more awake. Casey could hear some rustling in the background as he got out of bed. “Like, followed by a stranger stalked?”
“Is there another kind?” Casey wondered bemusedly.
“Fuck if I know.” His words were broken by a yawn that ended with his jaw cracking. “What happened?”
“I was out skating yesterday because I had nothing to do, and I could swear I saw something in the woods, so I let Atticus know, and he had his security check out the property.” Technically true, even if Lydia and Branson weren’t actually security. It was easier than trying to explain everything else. “They found a really weird ring in the area, so we know there was someone there, they probably don’t mean well, and that’s about it.”
“Really weird how?” Jason wondered, slightly muffled by the sounds of rustling and clattering in the kitchen.
“It had some sort of, like… sigil or crest or whatever on it, and it could be flipped upside down. Real secret society level bullshit, I was totally getting flashbacks to all my great-grandpa’s old Masonic kitsch,” Casey explained, and she levered herself up off of the couch again to start pacing across the room.
There was silence on the other end of the line, before finally, Jason asked slowly, “Was the ring silver? Or mostly silver?”
Casey blinked. “Yeah,” she answered carefully. “How did you know?”
“One of the regulars at work wears one like that. She was in the office while I was telling a couple of coworkers about your ‘he turned into a bear!’ story.” Something thumped on the other end of the line as he put something down. “But you’re okay?”
Rather than answer the question, Casey whined, “Jason, you told people about that?”
“What?” he asked, bewildered. “It was funny! How was I supposed to know the resident rubbernecker was going to decide she just had to get a closer look?”
“Who was it?” Casey sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers.
“Uh… Georgia Carmichael. Rich bitch from the other side of the city. Your husband probably knows her. Don’t all rich people basically know each other?” Jason sounded like he was sulking by the end.
Casey hung up the phone and tossed it onto the couch. Sure, she wasn’t surprised that Jason and Annie hadn’t believed her story about Atticus being a were-bear, but she hadn’t actually expected either of them to mention it to anyone else. She definitely hadn’t expected that to be the cause of her acquiring a new stalker.
Dropping her face down into her hands, she sat down heavily, groaning as she thought over the mess. The most difficult part of this new life was supposed to be pregnancy and dodging paparazzi, not dodging prospective murderers. She hadn’t signed up for the specialized murderers.
But at least now, she had a name to attach to the ring. She could let Atticus know about that so he could point Lydia and Branson in the right direction. And later, she could yell at Jason and make sure Annie hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else. The last thing anyone needed was for the problem to unexpectedly double.
And she was quitting her job that day. She made an executive decision while she was sitting on the couch. She had enough stress going on and didn’t need to carry on adding service industry stress on top of it. She was only human, after all, and it wasn’t like she needed the money. If she really got that bored, she had nothing but time to find a better job later on.
She took a moment to compose herself before she got to her feet again.
*
“I have heard of her,” Atticus remarked once Casey finished speaking. “Her family as a whole, rather. I haven’t met any of them, but a few of them move in similar circles.” He didn’t seem satisfied with whatever else was going through his mind.
“What do you know about her?” Casey prodded, leaning forward slightly, expectantly. “There has to be more to it than just that.”
“If they’re the people I’m thinking of,” Atticus carried on carefully, “then this isn’t a new hobby for her. Her family has been at it for a very long time.”
Casey wilted slightly before she folded her arms over her chest and slumped, shoulders rounding forwards. “So, she knows what she’s doing,” she translated, and her expression wrinkled with distaste. “That’s just perfect.”
Atticus leaned forward, kissing her forehead. “Don’t worry. I can handle this,” he assured her. “It’s impossible for her to find any reason to go after you—you’re a regular human—so you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“That doesn’t actually make me feel any better,” Casey groused, scuffing the toes of one foot against the ground. “I would rather not have her looking into anyone. And Jason’s the one who told her.”
“After you told him,” Atticus added blandly.
“It was a lot to swallow at first!” Casey protested, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “You can’t just turn into a bear in front of someone and not expect them to mention it!”
Atticus held
his hands up, somewhere between surrender and pacifying. “Just put it out of your mind,” he advised her. “If it turns into a problem, then we’ll let you know. Until then, just let me, Lydia, and Branson deal with it.”
It wasn’t an answer that Casey was particularly pleased with, but she couldn’t actually think of anything she could do to help just then. With a reluctant sigh, she nodded in agreement.
*
Annie answered her phone on the second ring, greeting Casey with a cheerful, “So, did you sleep with him?”
Casey blinked. She had actually forgotten about that conversation entirely. She cleared her throat. “Well, yeah, but that’s not what I called about.”
“Sounds ominous,” Annie decided. “What’s going on?”