“Beverly Hills? That’ll be a nice score for you if he bites.”
“Practically a done deal!” Dad chuckled. “But I don’t know why you’re so worried about the weather. You know you’ll spend the whole time slathered in sunscreen and wearing as big a hat as you can find.”
“I’m not that bad,” I grumbled.
“If you say so, sweetheart.” But I could still hear the laughter in his voice.
He was right, of course, as annoying as that was. I’d inherited his dark, curly hair and love of the heat and sun, along with my mother's Irish skin which seemed to burn at the mere thought of sunshine. It was an ironic combination for a fire witch, but the day they invented sunblock with SPF 1000 would be the day I would be a happy girl.
We passed the twenty-minute drive to Brentwood with small talk. He asked how my job was going but didn’t really listen to the answer. I asked about the real estate market in LA and learned more than I’d ever wanted to know about the relative merits of marble versus granite in kitchen renos. Still, I was already enjoying myself more than I had in ages. Time with my dad always went down easy like coconut cream pie, his favorite—fluffy, light, and mostly devoid of any real nutrition.
To his credit though, Dad seemed honestly pleased to hear Mom was doing better. I could never tell how much he knew about magic. He had to have guessed something when her wind powers accidentally killed my uncle. But in the years since their divorce, he’d never once given any indication to me that he knew about witches, or that he knew I was one as well.
But after going years thinking my brother was oblivious only to discover just how wrong I was, I now doubted my father could possibly be so clueless. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him outright though. He’d been a caring, but mostly absentee parent for the greater part of my life. It was a divide between us I just couldn’t seem to cross.
As we pulled into the driveway of Dad’s house and parked in the garage, I noticed the Camry parked beside us in the second spot. “So that guy’s still living in your guest house?”
“That guy is Josh, as I’m quite sure you remember, and yes. He’s smart. He’s saving up before he buys. You know what house prices are like here. And I like the company, particularly since your brother moved back East. I keep telling you, Josh is a great guy and a real catch. I’ve never understood why you two didn’t hit it off.”
And I couldn’t believe Dad was still hoping for a rom-com connection between myself and his renter. “Hmmm,” I murmured noncommittally, using my exit from the car to avoid the topic. Dad retrieved my bag from the trunk, and I followed him into the house.
It didn’t matter that the guest house was three times the size of my own house and had been featured in several magazines; it still seemed strange for a grown man to be living in my father’s backyard. But that was just one of the many differences between East and West Coast living.
My father rolled my suitcase over to the corridor off the entryway. “You want your old room? Nobody’s been in it since.”
“Yes, please. Thanks.” There were four bedrooms upstairs, one belonging to my brother from when he was still living with Dad, but I preferred the relative privacy of the main floor guest room. “The place looks great.”
My father shared my preference for neutral décor, but the resemblance between our homes ended there. Open concept, modern, and elegant, with a wall of glass doors which opened up onto the pool—our lifestyles couldn’t have been more different.
Complete with the addition of a lanky young man who was now walking across the yard to knock on the glass.
“What’s he doing here?” I muttered under my breath.
“Be nice. I told him to stop by and say hello when we got back.” All smiles, Dad strode over to the door and unlocked it. “Hey, Josh! Come on in.”
“Thanks, Don. Hi, Theresa. It’s great to see you.”
He honestly did look very pleased to see me, though I couldn’t think why. I’d hardly given him the time of day the last time I was here. Dad had invited him out to dinner with us several times during my stay, including one night at a swanky restaurant where Dad conveniently had to keep going outside to take a call. I couldn’t even remember what we talked about, though apparently I hadn’t been rude enough to deter his interest. For me, it was all a bit of a haze. At the time, I’d fled to LA to escape the emotional fallout of my brief, ill-advised romance with Aidan.
Unfortunately, history was almost repeating itself. Aidan White and Truly Mason were now my closest friends. I wanted them to be happy—though their relationship was filled with the kind of drama I was currently trying to avoid—but since Truly was also the ruling Lady of my Circle, I’d endured a few uncomfortable third wheel moments.
The sight of the tall, handsome young man suddenly made me angry and I could feel heat rising along my skin. I’d been hoping that coming to LA would be a welcome break from it all, and I didn’t need some infatuated man-child who couldn’t move out and find his own place to saunter through the backyard and ruin it!
I shook myself mentally, and then shook my head as I realized Dad and Josh were waiting for me to say something. “Sorry. Long flight. Hi, Josh. What have you been up to?”
“Honestly, if I told you, you’d get back on a plane and out of here as fast as you could. It’s that boring.” He smiled, but nothing in me responded to it.
I hadn’t been faking my surprise that he was still living here. From what Dad had mentioned an obvious number of times over the phone, the software Josh had developed for improving sound recording was in hot demand by all the Hollywood studios. He was a rising star in his field. And yes, he was undoubtedly handsome in that hot, tech guy sort of way—tall, lean, strong-jawed but smooth-cheeked, with glasses framing dark-lashed eyes and dark hair with a few sun streaks in it.
But he was also a Mundane through and through, and for a fire witch like me, utterly boring.
Josh sat down on the end of the cream couch by the fireplace. Ignoring the empty space beside him, I walked around the glass coffee table and sat on the wing chair opposite.
Dad clapped his hands together. “So, who would like something to drink?”
I pasted on a smile. “Perrier, if you’ve got it.”
Josh nodded. “The same. Thanks.”
Dad moved off to the kitchen, smirking like the cat who’d eaten the proverbial canary.
“So…” I began, “it’s crazy how cold it is.” I finally settled on the weather as a follow-up topic.
“Yeah, truly weird. It came out of nowhere. It’s the summer solstice, so the Wiccans are going nuts about it all over Facebook like it’s a portent of doom or something.”
“Solstice?”
“You know, the longest day of the year.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.” I really hadn’t remembered. For lowly hedge witches, and even some trueborn witches, knowing stuff like that might be important, but I was an elemental—a witch who derived her powers from the elements. I didn’t need to know spells and the optimal conditions for them.
Truthfully, I’d never liked the term elemental. It reminded me that powers like mine were uncomfortably similar to those of the species of fae who were also aligned with the elements. I'd often wondered what the difference between us really was, but had never dared to voice that thought to any other witch. With tensions rising between fae and witch, fae and fae, and witch and witch, we were all starting to align under our chosen designations.
“Theresa?”
I looked up with a start. “I’m sorry. Again. What did you say?”
Josh looked away, but not before I caught the brief flash of hurt in his eyes. Since when had I become such an unfocused and distracted witch?
And by witch, I meant something that rhymed with it.
Dad handed me a glass of Perrier on ice. “That’s my T! Always with her head in the clouds!” Something which was neither complimentary nor true, but I appreciated the save. I took a sip of my drink and then put the glass down on the table.
/>
After a moment of awkward silence, Josh stood. “Well, I should go. You’ve had a long trip, and here I come barging in before you’ve even had a chance to catch your breath. I was just wondering if you wanted to catch an early dinner while your dad was at his showing. We could go down to Santa Monica Pier to that Mexican place you like.”
Dad’s smile was brilliant in its wide whiteness. “What a lovely idea, Josh!”
I was amazed Josh remembered my fondness for Mariasol when I’d only mentioned it once two years before. It was thoughtful of him, and for the first time, I regretted my aversion to dating Mundanes just a teeny, tiny bit.
Not enough to say yes though. “Thanks, Josh. That’s really nice of you, but I was planning on going with my Dad. I’m considering renewing my realtor’s license and thought it would give me a feel for the game again.”
Josh’s face fell while my father’s lit up. I’d correctly calculated this was the one thing which might distract my father from his matchmaking attempts. He’d never understood why I'd given up real estate for a modest five-figure job working at the state capital. I'd told him the market was flat in Maine, which was partly true, but the real reason was that I’d needed a more steady work schedule once I was accepted into the Lady’s Circle.
Josh stood. “Well, I’d better go and let you get ready then. Maybe tomorrow?” He was tenacious. I had to give him that.
“Sure. Let’s see how it goes.”
I walked out with him onto the patio with continued vague assurances that we would do something sometime soon-ish. As Josh walked back to the guest house, I thought I could feel cold pinpricks across the skin of my arms, almost like tiny ice pellets hitting them, and when I looked up, the sky was dark and gray.
A storm was coming.
Chapter Two
Here's the thing about male witches—they're incredibly rare, and most of them are bat-crap crazy like Noah Whitlock, the last warlock I’d tangled with. No one knows why the Y chromosome doesn’t play well with whatever gene witch powers happen to reside on.
Here’s the other thing about male witches—some witches are drawn to even a hint of like-minded blood in a member of the opposite sex. And by some witches, I mean me. I can sense witch blood like a tingle, a thrill across my entire body, and I’m drawn to it whether that blood resides in a decent guy, or a mouth breathing bottom feeder. As soon as my powers developed when I was sixteen, I launched into a series of disastrous relationships with guys who usually only had a drop or two in them. They might be as unaware and powerless as a Mundane, but they still managed to give me the feels. When I started dating Aidan, I already knew he had witch blood since his mother was a member of my Circle. What no one knew at the time was that he was also a bear-shifter like his father.
Maybe that was what doomed us, just like it did his parents. It’s common knowledge that witches and fae hooking up is usually a very bad idea. And maybe that’s just what I tell myself to make myself feel better. When I see how Aidan looks at Truly, I know he never felt the same way about me. Since they’re both half witch and half fae, maybe they’ll beat the odds.
If any of us survive the coming witch/fae apocalypse, that is.
But suffice it to say that I know what the allure of witch blood feels like intimately, so when Dad and I drove across town to meet his newest client, I knew the fair-haired man waiting for us outside the Beverly Hills mansion had a good portion of it throbbing in his veins.
Throbbing. Don’t think of throbbing.
Dad was all white teeth and charm as he got out and greeted the man. He made the introductions as he unlocked the front door. “Theresa, this is MacAdam Ward. Mr. Ward, this is my daughter. She’s an agent as well.”
I gave Dad a look for his little white lie, but he ignored me.
The man gestured for me to precede him into the house. “Lovely to meet you, Theresa. But call me Mac. Everyone does.”
Heaven help me, he had a gorgeous Scottish burr to his voice. It matched his equally gorgeous face and body. As we entered the foyer, the light of the grand chandelier above us glinted off his hair, making it look like it had been dusted with gold. His witch blood pheromones had to be messing with my eyesight.
“It’s a pleasure, Mac.” I tossed my dark curls before I could stop myself. My brother might be the one who had inherited our father's extroversion, but I had long learned to mimic the mannerisms. I was glad I’d had an hour to freshen up and put on a white pencil skirt, low-heeled slingbacks, and a form-fitting black top with a sweetheart neckline. A white cardigan which was cinched in at my waist with a black patent leather belt had been my only concession to the weather.
My father gave the man a copy of the spec sheet. “Theresa is thinking of joining me as my partner here in LA.” I gave him another warning look, but Dad was in full sales mode. “Then you’ll have two Ortizes dedicated to finding you the perfect home!”
Mac looked a little bemused. “While I’m sure that would be delightful, this seems as nice a place as any.” He glanced at the sheet. “And as I said on the phone, the price seems fair, so I see no reason to haggle. I’m happy to wrap things up as quickly as we can.”
I’d rarely seen my father speechless. I didn’t blame him. I’d glanced at the spec sheet on the way over and the house was listed at just north of 12 million. It took a certain kind of wealth for someone to not bat an eye at that price, especially since it was Dad’s understanding that his client was only purchasing it as a vacation home.
But my father was nothing if not quick on his feet. “Well, that certainly makes my job easier! Still, now that we’re here, you should probably at least take a look through.”
Mac agreed, though I got the sense it was more to humor Dad than anything else. As I did my best to provide support by pointing out the selling features of each room, I could tell Mac’s interest was increasing, but it wasn’t in the house.
Tingle. Tingle. TINGLE.
We ended up back in the foyer. “Thank you, Don,” Mac said. “There was nothing I saw which changed my mind. I’d like to take possession as soon as it can be arranged.”
“The buyers are motivated, and as you can see, they’ve already moved out. I can go back to the office right now and start drawing up the paperwork.”
Dad was too much of a professional to let it show, but I knew he was mentally calculating his commission. I was happy for him. I still remembered the thrill of the sale from my days in the game.
Mac nodded. “That would be wonderful. You can fax it directly to the Waldorf Penthouse suite. The hotel will give you the number. The funds have already been transferred to a local bank.” He took out a business card from his inside pocket and passed it to Dad. “My assistant can give you all the details and handle any part of the transaction which doesn’t require my signature. He’s on UK time, but he’s on call day or night.”
My dad hesitated as he fingered the thick, embossed card thoughtfully. “May I ask what you do for a living, Mr. Ward?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not say, Don.” Mac’s friendly smile took the sting out of his refusal. “Regaining some anonymity is one of the reasons I’ve made the trek across the pond. But I do promise it’s nothing illegal.”
As we all laughed, I wondered if I was only imagining that his smile had turned just a little wicked.
We left the house, and my father locked up behind us before turning and shaking Mac’s hand. “I’ll get everything faxed to you by this afternoon. If there’s anything else I can do for you, just let me know.”
“Thank you, Don, and I know this might be rather presumptuous, but I was wondering if your lovely daughter would extend her professional services by showing me around a little bit. I was thinking of visiting the famed Santa Monica Pier.” The question was directed at Dad, but Mac Ward’s attention was fixed on me.
It was indeed presumptuous, but I knew I wasn’t going to say no. His blood was calling to mine, and my personal history was proof I had very little d
efense against its siren call. “I would love to.”
Dad didn’t look happy. “Are you sure, honey?” Only someone who was family would have been able to hear the hint of concern in his voice.
Mac was smiles all around now. “I can assure you, Don, Theresa is safe with me. I was raised to be a perfect gentleman. I don’t know anyone in the city, and it would be lovely to take in the sights with someone more familiar with them.”
Dad mustered up an almost genuine smile in response. “Oh, I’m not worried. Theresa can take care of herself!”
And we all laughed again as if the tension hadn’t risen suddenly, but there was something in Dad’s tone which made me wonder if he wasn’t as ignorant of my abilities as he pretended to be.
After a quick kiss on my forehead and a whispered query as to whether I had a way to get home if I needed to—I assured him I had my phone and my credit card tucked into the front pocket of my skirt—Dad was on his way. As the Mercedes pulled away, I walked over to the passenger side of the rental car but was surprised when Mac hesitated at my side.
“You know, I hate to admit it, but I haven’t quite gotten used to this whole driving on the other side of the road business. I’m a bit surprised I wasn’t pulled over by one of your LA police officers on my way over here.”
“Well, they’re not my police—I’m from Maine—but I can drive if you like.”
He placed the keys in my hands almost before I’d finished offering. Crossing over to the other side of the vehicle, I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Mac got in the passenger side.
I backed down the driveway. “So, Santa Monica Pier? Not the Hollywood sign? Or Grauman’s Chinese Theater?”
He chuckled. “Are you implying the pier is right up there among the most banal of tourist destinations?”
“You said it, not me.” As I pulled out onto the street and turned towards Santa Monica Boulevard, I glanced over to see if I’d offended him, but he was still smiling. “Just don’t get your hopes up. The pier isn’t like how they make it look in the movies. It’s pretty commercialized and crowded.” I glanced at the dark sky. “Though this crazy weather might thin things out.”
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