Shanna grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. Chill out, Miler. I am used to lifting my invisibility spell around people who know I’m a witch and have special abilities of their own.”
Karmichael glared at Lise.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I know you’re jealous of my teleporting ability, but trust me when I say it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. And not my only ability.”
“Are you a witch, too?” he asked, scrubbing his hands over his face. He groaned. “I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”
Lise shook her head. “Nope. I am human. Well, kind of. I would be what you consider a superhuman. More like a child supersoldier, but human nonetheless.”
Shanna held up a hand. “Shut up, both of you.”
“What? Do you hear something?” Lise demanded in a whisper.
“What the hell is going on here?” Karmichael demanded in a loud whisper.
Shanna shot him a pointed look. “Shut your trap or I will”—she wiggled her pointer finger at him—“use this.”
Karmichael held his hands up in surrender, scooting away from her, his butt leaving tracks in the dirt. He stopped when his back was safely up against the trunk of a tree. “You. Put that finger away. There is no need for any magical hocus pocus here.”
“Uh, Shanna,” Lise hissed, her knife poised in the air, “You may want to…”
Shanna kept her gaze on Karmichael. “Yeah, I hear it.”
“Then what are you waiting for? I’ve got the human.”
Shanna shot him one more warning look, then disappeared.
Karmichael risked a glance at Lise. “Where did she go?” he demanded in a high pitched whisper.
“Hunting,” Lise answered, the knife still poised in the air as she popped her head out from behind the tree trunk.
“What do you mean she went hunting?”
Lise turned around, crouching down behind the tree as she faced him. “Exactly what I just said. She went hunting.”
Suddenly, Shanna appeared in front of him again. She gave him a withering look, waving her hand. A pair of goggles appeared out of nowhere, landing in the palm of his hand. Giving him one last annoyed look, she faded away again.
“I think I just missed something important here,” he said slowly.
Lise rolled her eyes. “Put the goggles on genius. They will allow you to watch what she is doing like you’re there with her.”
He put the goggles on as ordered.
“Blue looks good on you,” Lise commented with a smile. “Now, shut up and let us work.”
It was Karmichael’s turn to roll his eyes.
Shanna leaned back against the trunk of the massive redwood tree, placing a hand against her rapidly rising and falling chest. In a weak attempt to catch her breath, she concentrated on calming her overexcited heartbeat down.
She was being followed. Well, stalked was more like it, but she really wasn’t a huge fan of the melodramatic nature of that word. So, she was sticking to her story of someone or something was following her.
Wait. Crap. That didn’t sound much better. There was really no other way to phrase it, though. And, honestly it was all her fault.
She had been so distracted by Karmichael, she hadn’t noticed the intruder until it was too late. What in God’s name had possessed her to knock him out and allow him to be brought along on this little side trip into hell?
Why had she revealed one of her deepest, darkest secrets to him?
This really couldn’t end well for either of them.
Okay, she was willing to admit—at least at this particular juncture in time—that she hadn’t exactly thought this whole leaving them two miles behind thing and taking on whatever or whomever was out there on her own thing through. Wanting someone to know at least one of her secrets had overridden her common sense.
Fine. More like the anxiety about Karmichael finding out even that minute detail about who she really was had completely ignored her sense of self-preservation. Despite her self-preservation pulling out a bullhorn and all but screaming out the reasons this was a horrible idea, while jumping around like a cheerleader on crack, she had used magic in front of him.
And now she was being stalked because she was distracted by him.
But, whatever.
The feeling of being watched creped over her skin again, setting off her sixth sense. The tattoo on her left forearm warmed up, causing the skin around it to feel like it was on fire.
Whatever or whomever was out there was getting closer.
Shanna pushed up the sleeve of her thermal shirt, rubbing the glowing tattoo. She knew it was pointless, but it hurt like hell. And, while it worked great as an early warning system to supernatural danger, it was rather annoying.
She glanced down at the magical ink permanently embedded into her skin. The now glowing picture was situated just below the crook of her elbow, on her inner forearm. It was a drawing of Artemis’—yes, that would be the Greek goddess of the hunt—bow, with the symbols of earth, fire, water, and air surrounding the bow at four points, the symbol of spirit inside of the bow.
It identified her to all supernatural beings as a Regulator.
Since she had placed a cloaking spell on all of her tattoos in an attempt to fit in better with the human population—besides, normal fourteen-year-old girls didn’t have multiple tattoos—supernatural beings couldn’t sense her, but she, unfortunately, could still sense them.
That, by the way, was really awkward at school, by the way. And yes, there were a few supernatural beings other than her and Rhyder at her school.
Since she was on the subject of tattoos, she had another one on the inside of her right wrist. It was the infinity sign, which was the symbol of the coven she and Rhyder had been born into. She also had a third one on the back of her right shoulder, but that one had absolutely nothing to do with her powers.
She held her breath, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail. Pulling down her sleeve, she let the breath out slowly, listening for movement in the trees around her.
A twig snapped in warning a split second before a massive gray and black wolf lounged at her.
Holy shit!
She dove to her left, tucking into a somersault right before she hit the ground. She rolled fluidly to her feet, grabbing a stick on her way up. She glared down at the massive wolf, which had barely missed hitting the trunk of the tree with its face.
The wolf spun around on her, growling out a warning low in its throat as he watched her through dark chocolate eyes that were eerily aware.
“I know we’ve had our differences over the years, but are you sure this is the way you want to play it?” she asked the animal calmly.
The wolf studied her, growling at her again.
“Fine. Suit yourself,” she muttered, popping the massive predator on its snout with the stick. “Bad dog,” she admonished as she shook a finger at it like it was the family terrier who had stolen a piece of food off the dining room table.
The creature whined, shaking its head. It backed up a couple of steps, dropping onto its haunches, sitting in front of her much like a domesticated dog would.
She glared at the wolf. “You should be at home. And, for the record, Overton, you’re supposed to growl before you lunge at my throat, not after.”
The wolf transformed into a fully clothed boy. “There’s no fun in it if I warn you,” Bailey Overton pointed out, stretching. He was dressed in all black, just like her and Lise. He shot her a look. “Besides, did you really think I would let you and my cousin do this alone? You know I couldn’t miss out on all the fun.”
Shanna groaned. “I know. Hold your horses, I have some baggage to unload before we can do this.”
Lise appeared before them. “No need. He is already home, safely locked away in his room with Rhyder. Who, by the way, isn’t too happy about your little secret being out.”
“Lise,” Shanna said, folding her arms over her chest. “Did you, by any
chance, remember to take the goggles from him?”
Lise’s eyes widened. “Crap. Knew I was forgetting something,” she muttered, snapping her fingers.
Bailey laughed.
Shanna just shook her head, waving her hand. “Sorry, Miler. This next part isn’t for prying eyes,” she said to the empty air a second before the goggles appeared in her hand. She crushed them, dropping the pieces onto the forest floor. “Okay, now we can go.”
CHAPTER 21
August 2015
Colstrip, MT
Complicated.
That was what his life had become. The day Annelise Megan Yves walked into his already screwed up life… Well, quite honestly, that was the day what little simplicity existed in his world, along with the candidness he tried to keep present in his life to maintain the balance of the things he was forced to hide, decided to walk out of Scott Raleigh’s life.
His instinct to protect her and to be there for her had screwed him over more than once over the years. Hell, it had even brought him to the brink of death once or twice. God knows he has tried to walk away from her. He had even gone as far as to push her away to the point that, the first time they were in the same room together, she threw a knife at his head.
That said a lot.
He still couldn’t decide if she was just still royally pissed off at him, or if she was now scared of him.
He rubbed his temples as he stared out the windshield. Focusing on the two story blue house a few houses down, he groaned.
He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. After being burned by the flame on more than one occasion, it was really starting to wear on him.
For the love of all that was supposedly holy in the world, they had cut off all contact with one another! He had made sure to do something she would never forgive him for to keep her away and safe. He did something he would regret for the rest of his natural life, something that he knew would make him stay away from her.
Hell, she had changed her name to Megan Nox, completely reinventing herself into someone who had no ties to her past. Someone who could pass as a normal human being and live a simple life. He had gone as far as to erase any record of Reece Whitfield, permanently assuming his alias Scott Raleigh.
Of course, his reasons didn’t completely revolve around her, but for the sake of this argument, he’d go with that version of the story.
Now, because of the events of last night, and what was going on back east, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Things were changing, and, while not all the changes were necessarily for the worse, the truth was starting to come out one lie at a time.
That was the whole reason he found himself sitting outside of a house in the middle of nowhere Montana—twelve hours after crashing into his ex’s life like a tidal wave—debating on whether or not he should drag his best friend since elementary school further into his own personal hell.
If he went into that house, allowing the skeletons hiding in his very large closet to come out to play, he was going to end up shattering his friend’s world by exposing him to the reality of what the world was really like.
“Jesus!” Scott muttered, nearly jumping through the roof of the car as his ringing cell phone shattered the quietness of his little bubble.
He grabbed the noisy contraption, flipping it open. “Hey, man, now’s not really a good time.”
“Tell me about it,” Rhyder muttered through the speakers. “I just turned my best friend into a pig, then back into a very pissed of human being, in front of my entire group of brothers and their friends.”
Scott slapped the steering wheel with a gloved hand, watching as the gray sky opened up again. He watched the fat rain drops pound the windshield in rapid succession. “So, I’m going to go out on limb here and say the witches are out of the closet.”
“Yep. Just giving you a curtesy heads up because—this is just a hunch here, seeing as D has been in contact with Megan—we’re not going to be the only ones outted in the near future.”
Scott sighed. “How much to they know?”
“All Shanna and I did was give a small demonstration of our magical abilities. They know Megan isn’t completely human. They may have some information about Shan and I being some type of supernatural hunters… Oh, yeah. They know about our supernatural ability to heal. Other than that, the rest of our secret is still in the closet and no one else has been comprised.”
What the…
Scott stared out the windshield, blinking a few times to clear his vision. He knew he was a bit sleep deprived and the drug they had used on him was capable of screwing with his mind, but he had to be hallucinating the scene in front of him. There was no way he was watching a half-naked teenage boy climb out one of the second story windows, slipping and sliding on the covered porch roof, in only a pair of sweatpants, which he happened to be pulling up as he tried to stay vertical.
“Thanks for the heads up, cuz. I’m going to have to let you go. I’m watching a train wreck unfold in front of me and can’t seem to stop myself from watching,” he murmured into the phone. “I’ll let you know what develops on my end.”
He flipped the phone shut, dropping it back into the center console. He watched in awe as the figure slid on the slick roof, doing a very interesting dance that involved a pinwheel like move in an attempt to save himself. The kid lost his fight with gravity, sliding down the roof, landing face first, spread eagle like a reverse snow angel, in the mud covered yard.
Biting back a laugh, Scott sighed as he left the warmth and safety of his car. He pulled a heavy wool blanket out of the trunk, his eyes still glued to the scene unfolding in front of him. A pair of tan boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a tan jacket flew out of the window, landing in the mud around the still unmoving figure. The window slammed shut.
Shaking his head, he made his way across the street to the groaning figure, who was starting to push himself up out of the mud. Scott reached him as the kid stuffed his bare feet into the boots.
“Here. I recommend covering up with this,” he said, holding out the dry blanket before the kid could don the wet articles of clothing spread out around him. “Trust me when I say that you will regret putting on those wet clothes after lying face down in wet mud. You may regret it more than whatever had you diving out the window like Freddy Krueger himself was chasing you.”
“T-t-h-h-a-a-n-k-k-s,” the kid managed to stutter through chattering teeth. He refused to meet Scott’s eyes as he wrapped the dry blanket around his bare upper body.
The kid pulled his car keys out of one of the many pockets on his sweatpants. Bending over, he picked his shirt and jacket up off the ground in one quick swoop, hightailing it to a blue pickup parked in front of a neighboring house like someone had set the rain around him on fire.
Ah, yes. Scott remembered the days of being a slave to hormones. He shuddered at the thought. He cared never to relieve the situations they had gotten him into ever again.
Since he was already in front of the house, he walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell.
From inside the house, he heard, “Cassidy Rene Lavi, your ass is mine!” before the door was yanked open.
He suddenly found himself face to face with a not so happy Derrick Lavi. Scott smiled. “Half-naked hormonal teenage boy jacked my blanket and jumped into a blue truck.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “He tore off down the street. Do I need to pursue?”
A genuine smile spread across his best friend’s face as he pushed open the screen door. “Nah, Raleigh. It’s a small town. I’ll find him sooner or later.”
Scott returned his quick man hug, patting Derrick on the back. He stepped into the living room, stomping his mud covered boots on the mat that covered part of the tiled entry way. “I told you not to bang the pretty cheerleader while drunk sophomore year. This is karma coming back to bite you in the ass. Who knew the bitch has such an awesome sense of humor?”
Derrick glared at him, his gray eyes narrowing. “Not funny, man. Do
you really want to bring up stupid high school decisions? I can end this game with the mention of one name.”
“Touché.”
Scott pulled his wet hoodie off, hanging it on the rack beside the door. Kicking off his boots, he retreated onto the light brown carpet as Derrick shut the door behind him.
He smiled as he watched his fifteen-year-old niece descend the stairs, dressed in a pair of red flannel pajama bottoms and a barely there white tank top. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back in a messy bun and there was no mistaking the daggers her hazel eyes were shooting in her father’s direction.
“Now, I know for a fact that my sweet little Cassi would never look at her father with that level of hated and disrespect in her beautiful doe eyes. I also know that she wouldn’t have a half-dressed boy sneaking out of her bedroom window like a thief in the night. My eyes have got to be deceiving me,” Scott drawled, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’m not so little anymore, Uncle Scott,” she pointed out, pausing at the bottom of the stairs with both hands on her hips. “Which you would know if you were ever around.”
Ouch.
No shit she wasn’t his sweet little Cassi anymore. She was all grown up with the attitude to match.
Scott raised an eyebrow. “You may not be little anymore, but you’re definitely not old enough to take that tone with me young lady. I can, and will, knock you down a peg or two if you keep it up,” he snapped.
Cassi’s eyes widened. She sighed, relaxing her stance a little. “It’s not what you think. Not that Daddy gave us any time to explain before he threatened Tyler with his gun.”
Ah. Tyler’s half-naked swan dive out the window and his clumsy face plant in the dirt were making a lot more sense now.
He glanced sideways at Derrick. “Glock or shotgun?”
“Shotgun.”
“Sweet.”
“Right? The poor kid damn near pissed his pants.”
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