I pictured her stricken face, pinched with fear at first but quickly transforming to hope and joy when she saw me.
Turning the knob, I pushed open the door.
A set of stairs led up to another door. I tore through it, racing up the stairs, desperation stealing all reason. Bursting from the door at the top, I found myself outside the house.
No Granny.
The moon was half covered now. They’d already taken her. I fell against the side of the house, a sob catching in my throat. “She’s not here,” I said, my voice blank despite the roiling emotions inside me.
“We’ll find her,” Oral said quietly.
I raised my eyes to his, letting myself voice my deepest fear for the first time. “What if we don’t?”
“We will.” He took my shoulders in both hands and looked me square in the eye. “I swear to you, Cayenne Golden, we will find your granny.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I promise, anyway.”
I wanted to scream in frustration, but that was probably not a good idea. I bit it back, letting Oral pull me into his arms instead. It boiled up in me, coming out as a strangled growl. The next thing I knew, it had turned into an ugly, choked sob. I collapsed against his chest, letting the grief wash over me as sobs wracked my body.
I’d come all this way, done all this, and Granny was still missing. I’d tainted my magic, had seen three men I admired rip apart someone with their teeth. I’d probably turned the witch valley upside down as they panicked and searched for me. And it had all been for nothing. Granny Golden was not here.
14
Oral kissed the top of my head, my forehead that had gone clammy from the damp night and the force of my anguish. When the sobs had died down, he cupped my face in his hands and lifted my mouth to his. His kiss held more than it had earlier, more tenderness, more depth. My heart swelled with enough warmth to choke off my breath, and my hands curled into his thick hair. My body pressed into his, wanting him closer still, wanting to let his concern swallow me and make me believe it could all be okay.
As much as I wanted to stay and explore this new feeling between us, both inside me and apparent in his kiss, that wouldn’t get my granny back. I pulled away with a regretful pang.
“Aww, you’re killing me, Little Red,” he said.
“Great. Is that catching on?”
“Afraid so,” he said with a grin. “Now, are you ready to go kick ass and take names?”
Over his shoulder, I caught sight of the swollen veil bleeding across the face of the moon. I should be with my parents, my sisters, my granny. My intended. Back in our own happy little coven. By now, my mom would be completely freaking out, and even calm Malik would be worried sick. The coven’s entire ceremony was probably in disarray, upset by the disappearance of both me and Granny.
It was a miracle they hadn’t already found me. If Mom had shown up at Nelson’s house, she wouldn’t have just gone home when he sent her away. She would have kept looking. And if she’d firebombed their house, how had they gotten away? It suddenly struck me that I didn’t really know these guys at all. And what I knew…well, let’s just say they had been good to me, but they hadn’t exactly come across as men of high morals.
“When my mom blasted your house with fire,” I said, my stomach suddenly twisting in a terrible way. “How did you and Nelson get away?”
“He had a protection charm on it,” Oral said. “You know that.”
My eyes narrowed. “Right. But where did my mother go?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She left.”
“She just blasted your house and walked away? You didn’t see her again?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Why?”
“My mother wouldn’t just leave if she knew I was there. She would have waited you out.”
“Are you saying we hurt your mother?” he asked, his face tightening in a way I couldn’t fully read. Was he angry? Hurt? Guilty?
I cursed my parents for not letting me get to know more people in my life.
“No,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“Good,” he said. “Because we didn’t. I don’t know her reasons. All I know is that Nelson brought the protection stone with us, even though it left his house vulnerable if anyone comes back.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To protect you,” Oral said, as if that were obvious.
“He barely knows me. Why would he risk his house for me?”
“Because you bewitched all of us,” he said simply. “Whether you gave us healing magic or not.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“You don’t know what it’s like in our valley,” he said. “We’ve never been decent guys, and everyone knows it. And you—you gave us a chance to be something else. You trusted us to be good, and maybe that means we can be. Even me, the ugly stepchild of the bunch.”
“You’re not ugly,” I said, my heart aching at the bitter edge that had crept into his easy manner.
“Be real, Cayenne,” he said. “You’ve seen my brothers. I get the girls they won’t take, and the girls they’ve broken who think it’s payback to sleep with their brother. I’m the consolation prize at best, a tool for exacting revenge at worst. I don’t get girls who want me. You made me think…maybe someday I could.” He ducked his head and scratched the back of his ear.
I remembered holding onto those ears, steering him with them. I remembered how good he’d made me feel today and how safe last night. “You could,” I said fiercely. “You have.”
He lifted his head and shrugged. “We’d better get back to the others. The sooner we get the protection back on Nelson’s house, the better.”
My heart squeezed at the thought of Nelson’s house being destroyed while he was gone. Destroyed by my mother, because of me. Because I’d run off and wanted to save the day all by myself. And Nelson didn’t need to do that—I had enough magic to protect myself. Despite the fact that I’d told him that, he’d been willing to risk all he had to make sure I lived. Suddenly, I thought I’d cry again. But I couldn’t sit around bawling because I’d been stupid and reckless. The only way to fix this was to make sure I got back to my parents before they did something awful.
I grabbed Oral’s hand, my fingers tight around his. “Let’s go,” I said, my voice hard with anger. “The bastard that took my granny is going to pay for this.”
I marched off towards the clearing, not bothering to circle through the woods. A path led straight from the leader’s lodge towards the clearing, and I was taking it. No more pussy-footing around. I was taking the direct route.
15
Oral insisted we go back and meet his brothers because he couldn’t protect me by himself. And though I knew I could protect us both, I didn’t really want to hurt any wolves. Images of the boars ripping apart that wolf replayed in my mind. As sickness rose in my throat, I realized that I could never fight them that way. I had wanted revenge, to make them pay for taking granny. But now, as we marched through the woods, my eyes feeling scrubbed dry by the tears I’d shed, I just wanted her back.
Finally, we rejoined Nelson and Efrain. If they’d been fighting before, it hadn’t gotten better. Their faces were both set in hard, angry lines.
“Show time,” Efrain said, his voice hard as flint. “Let’s get this party started.”
“Did you find Granny?” I asked, though I knew they hadn’t. It was more of a way to stall, to figure out why my heart had begun to slam in my chest and Robin was flying around crazily in the dark.
I heard a quiet footstep in the woods and then another, and goosebumps raced up my arms.
“You need to go,” Efrain said to his brothers. “Get the hell out of here. This doesn’t concern you.”
He lifted his hands over my head, and before I could react, something cold and hard fell between my breasts, trapping my magic.
“No.” I gasped and reached up, but
he grabbed my hands and wrenched them behind my back.
“We all have our roles to play,” Efrain said. “It’s not personal.”
I could feel the cold stone on my chest, could feel it smothering my magic, dulling it, suppressing it. “What are you talking about?” I asked, beginning to struggle. “My magic! What did you do to my magic?”
His giant hands stayed closed around my slender wrists. “Go,” he snarled at his brothers. “If you don’t want to be in this position, don’t cross a witch. Get out of here before she curses you, too.”
“Let me go,” I cried, stomping on his feet with the heels of my boots. “I didn’t curse you, but I sure as hell will if you don’t release me.”
He didn’t seem to feel the blows. Inside, panic was ripping into me like teeth. Without my magic, I was nothing but an ordinary human. No, I was more helpless. Not only was I incapable of fighting back, I couldn’t even signal other witches to help me. I’d always depended on magic alone to get me out of anything. Now that it couldn’t, I had no idea how to even start.
“Efrain, we can’t,” Oral said, stepping forward. One look at his pleading face and I knew the bastard wasn’t going to fight his brother. He didn’t stand a chance.
“There’s the witch right there in that cage,” Efrain said, nodding at something I hadn’t noticed. While we’d been gone, he’d come up with a glass lantern. Maybe it had been in his backpack all day. Inside it, a small mouse crouched staring out at us.
“That’s not a witch,” I said quickly, although I couldn’t really tell. With my magic smothered, I couldn’t feel the magic around me, either. Not only was I unable to fight, I was half blind as well.
“That’s the witch making me do this,” Efrain said before turning to his brothers. “You think she’ll have mercy on me, on any of us, if we release Cayenne? Now get the fuck out before you’re forced to do something worse.”
Oral fell back, his eyes uncertain. He turned to Nelson, like he no longer trusted Efrain’s words.
“Nelson?” I called, my voice higher than usual. I turned my pleading eyes on them. “Oral. You can’t do this. Don’t believe him. I didn’t curse you. I only have elemental magic.”
“I know,” Nelson said quietly.
“You said you could be a good man, Oral. You said I’d made you see that.” To my horror, tears sprang into my eyes. The panic eating away at me had turned to anguish as it reached my heart and bit in.
“I want to be,” he said, shifting as his eyes darted between me and Efrain.
“I thought….you liked me.” The moment I said the words, I realized how pathetic they were, how incredibly idiotic I was.
“I do,” Oral said, his shoulders slumping, misery on his face as he turned away.
“Nelson,” I said desperately. He hadn’t risked his house for me. He’d risked it so that he could trap me. Still, I tried one more time, handing over the last shreds of my dignity. “Please, Nelson. I love you.”
His jaw clenched, and he stared at Efrain with such hatred I thought he might actually release me.
“Go now,” Efrain said behind me, his voice a deadly rumble like lava bubbling up through a volcano. “Don’t get mixed up in witch magic. It’s always a trap.”
I watched in disbelief as they turned to go, my heart wrenching against the bindings of veins and arteries. Nelson’s back was stiff, his shoulders taut. Oral’s shoulders slumped as he trudged after his older brother. No more than two steps later, they shifted into boars and took off down the hill.
When both brothers were gone, Efrain grabbed up the backpack with one hand, using his other hand like a cuff. I kicked out at him, but he barely flinched when the toe of my boot slammed into his ribs.
“That’s not my granny,” I snarled. “My granny’s not a shifter. Let me go right now, or I’ll put a curse on you myself.”
“You don’t want to do that,” he said. “That’s your granny in that lantern, all right. She’s not a shifter, but she somehow put her spirit in that mouse. If you want to bring it back to her body, you’ll see it go right back into her.”
“No,” I insisted. “I know my granny. She doesn’t have any magic that can do that.”
Didn’t I know her? She told me everything, all her old stories. She’d have told me if she could project like that. Projection—putting yourself in a trance and throwing your spirit into another body—was a human skill, not really magic, though it could be helped along with magic or drugs. Sometimes Yvonne and the mages did it, but it freaked me out. My mage father had said you could lose part of yourself in the process.
What if Granny really could do that? Would she want to? She lived out there all by herself. What if someone convinced her to do it for some reason? Or what if…what if she wanted to get her magic back so badly that she’d go into another body, one that had magic?
“Your granny saved my life last winter,” Efrain said. “But it wasn’t a blessing. It was a curse. Now I owe her, and she’s called in her debt. It’s not person, Cayenne. I’ve got to do what she says. And so do you.”
In that moment, I hated him worse than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. Not for betraying me, but for making me doubt my loving, capable grandmother. She would never hurt me.
Efrain had pulled a long, red satin dress out of the backpack. He thrust it at me.
“What is that?” I asked, my tone as horrified as I felt. I started kicking at his legs again, trying to rip my hands from his grasp.
“You think that dowdy old thing you’re wearing is fit for a king?” he asked. “You’re going to a coronation, Cayenne. You have to look the part.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said. “I’ve done my part. Now it’s time for you to do yours. Are you going to put that on like your granny wants, or am I going to have to do it for you?”
Breathing hard from my struggle, I threw my hair back into his face. “I can’t get dressed with my hands behind my back.”
“Fine,” he said. “Your granny is the one who put me in this position. This is what she wanted for me and for you. Do as she wants, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“You’d better hope I don’t,” I said.
The second he released my hands, I snatched the necklace off my neck. Before I could throw it, Efrain grabbed my hand, closing my fingers around the stone. It was just a stone tied up in some string from a sack of animal feed. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time at the ridiculousness of that crappy little necklace stopping me, the most powerful of all the witch children in our valley. I’d thought that meant everything, that I was invincible. Nothing could hurt me.
But he’d known better than to attack. He’d crept into my heart, made me drop my defenses. I’d done it, too, just as easily as he must have known I would. I’d been all too eager to go wherever he directed, do what he wanted. I’d saved his life. And this was how he repaid me.
The bubble of rage inside me burst, and I drew back my free hand and whipped it across his rough cheek. His head jerked back, and his nostrils flared.
“That wasn’t very smart,” he said. He caught that wrist, too, dragging my hands behind my back again. “If you think this is a joke, you’re wrong. Your fate is sealed. So is mine.”
He ripped down the top of my favorite old dress, peeling it down my body. His calloused hands felt hot and rough against my skin, strong as iron against my straining limbs. “Don’t,” I whispered, pressing my knees together.
“It’s not me you should worry about,” he said. “I promised I wouldn’t touch you, and I won’t. You’re not meant for the likes of me, Cayenne. You get a king. That’s what your granny wanted for you. Royalty.”
“What are you talking about? What king?”
“The wolf king,” he said. “Their alpha. He’s choosing a mate tonight. If you’re smart, you’ll make sure he chooses you.”
“No,” I said, beginning to struggle again. “Listen to me, Efrain. You h
ave it all wrong. My granny doesn’t want me to do anything but be happy. She doesn’t have a destiny planned for me. There’s no reason for this. Witches don’t believe in all this. We don’t even have a queen.”
“You’ll have to ask her about that,” he said, wrapping a vine around my hands and pulling it tight. “I’m not royalty. I’m no one. A thug. A good-for-nothing shifty shifter who follows orders. That’s all I’ve ever been and all I’ll ever be.”
“That’s not who you are,” I said fiercely, desperate for anything to change his mind. “You’re loyal, and passionate, and you tattooed a flower on your butt cheek for your girlfriend. You don’t care what anyone thinks. You’re brave.”
“I’m not brave,” he snarled. “I’m a fucking coward. Those wolves I went after last night? That was me and my brothers, Cayenne. There were no wolves. Don’t you get it? We set you up. We set it all up. We’re not good people. Stop being naïve. It’s not cute anymore.” He pushed me back into the leaves gently, although the vein in his temple was pulsing with anger.
“Please,” I whispered as he ripped off the rest of my dress, already tattered from the wear of that day and the night before. “I’ve never even met that wolf. I don’t want anything to do with him. I want you.”
He snorted. “Trust me, you don’t want me.”
“I do,” I insisted. “If you’re going to make me marry someone against my will, pick a shifter. Where’s your king? I’ll marry him.”
His eyes snagged on me, moving over my body like a caress roughened with desire. “That old pervert would be an even worse choice,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts. “And that’s not what your granny wanted. It has to be the wolf king.”
He caught my feet and dragged the satiny dress over them, up over my trembling knees, my yielding thighs, my soft belly.
“Efrain, it doesn’t have to be this way,” I whispered, trying to catch his eye. If I could only get him to see his mistake. “You’re better than this.”
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