“What’s a little social nudity between friends?” Forehead wrinkled, he started tapping at the device in his palm. Five minutes later, he had managed to dial 911. Ten minutes later, he finished walking the dispatcher through our cover story then promised to wait around until the cops arrived.
“Can they track you with that?”
“I doubt it. It’s one of those units you buy at a big box store and fuel with minutes on plastic cards you buy in the checkout line. As long as you pay in cash and use a dummy email, it doesn’t leave a trail.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion at its screen. “Just in case, I think I’ll burn it when we get home.”
Even as tech challenged as I was, I knew burner phones weren’t literally phones you set on fire when you finished with them. In this case, a smidge of arson might not be a bad idea though. “Knock yourself out.”
“You probably shouldn’t be here when the cops arrive.” He smirked at me. “Unless you want me to explain your BM schedule to them too?”
“One day, Zed, you’re going to pay for this. I don’t know when or how, but it’s going to happen.” And it would probably involve laxatives mixed into an easy-to-stir form of takeout. “I promised myself a hunt, so don’t wait up if I get home late.”
“Be careful, and avoid the main road.” He bent down and ruffled my fur then scratched my ears until my back leg thumped. “Maybe Cam is rubbing off on you. This whole junior detective thing looks good on you. Maybe a mystery was all you needed to get your mind off things.”
Things being code for He Who Shall Not Be Named.
Answering required more time to form a response than I had. Sirens wailed in the distance, and I took my exit cue before animal control got called.
Chapter 9
A hunting we will go… A hunting we will go…
The wolf, unamused by my off-key singing while she was shoulder-deep in grass ripe with chipmunk smells, placed her paw on my consciousness and pushed down enough I took the hint. Either I shut up and went along for the ride, or I woke up naked in a field with no memory of how I’d gotten there.
Chuckling, I subsided and let her have her fun. After the craziness of the past few days, she’d earned it.
Thick grasses tickled my flanks, and I breathed in the cool air, weighing its difference in my lungs and deciding I liked its brisk edge. Tennessee itself wasn’t my problem. I liked the area just fine. Some things, like the higher mountains and denser forests, reminded me enough of Georgia I could pretend I was back in Villanow. Except the only way I could visit my old hometown was in my dreams.
Being exiled by Bessemer meant there was no going back, and maybe that’s why I clung to the idea of home so hard. Unlike the others, who stood a slim chance of visiting with our former alpha’s blessing, assuming they bowed and scraped enough to satisfy his pride, I would be killed for trespassing.
Thinking of home was like worrying a sore tooth. You know poking it will hurt, and yet you can’t keep your tongue from jabbing at the tender spots.
The wolf swatted me again, ready to bite me if I didn’t stop leaking human thoughts into what should have been a carefree romp punctuated by the munch of ground squirrels between her teeth.
A scent tantalized her nose, and she locked her knees where she stood. Water pooled in her mouth as a blur of dark brown scurried past. The wolf broke free of me, giving chase. Five easy strides, and she ducked her head, snapping her jaws. Warm copper flowed over her tongue while I tried not to think too hard about the crunching noises cute, furry woodland creatures made. Honestly? This deep in the wolf’s mind, it only made my stomach rumble.
The tickle of a song whispered on the breeze, and I urged the wolf closer to the edge of the grassy pasture. The masculine voice raised hairs down her spine while it turned my middle to warm goo. A muzzy part of my brain warned here be magic, and a whine lodged in the wolf’s throat, but no amount of mental caution flags could slow me as I tumbled down an embankment in my quest to follow the enchanting sound.
My paw wrung an overgrown chipmunk hole, and this time I went down hard, bumping my chin on the ground and clacking my teeth together. I bit my tongue in the process, and the taste of pennies filled my mouth. That burst of pain shattered my hold over the wolf, and she spun on her heel and ran until her nostrils stung with each inhale and her eyes watered from the chill in the air.
Panicked by my despondence, she did what I normally forbade her to do and bolted for the road. From here it was a straight shot home that allowed her to avoid the fences or homeowners armed with rifles and un-wolf-friendly dispositions. She reached the parking lot at the RV park before withdrawing in a rush that jerked me through an unexpected change bordering on a seizure.
That’s how Moore found me, delirious and naked in the gravel. I would be lying if I didn’t say my gut pitched at my vulnerable position and how he towered over me. I couldn’t take him in a fight without the wolf, and she was nowhere to be found.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the view,” he said, eyes locked on mine, “but don’t you need sun if you’re going to tan?”
“Do I look like I’m sunbathing?” I snapped, curling on my side. “Make yourself useful. Go find Abram.”
Try as I might, the pack bond slipped through my grasp. My head was too muddled to maintain a connection, and my eyes rolled shut.
“Dell?” A spike of honest concern lifted Moore’s voice.
A door slammed off in the distance. “What’s going on out here?” Footsteps crunched over gravel. “What’s wrong with her?”
I cracked my eyes open in time to see Enzo squaring off against Moore.
“I don’t know.” Moore raised his hands. “I’m on sentry duty. I found her like this.”
“Dell?” Enzo leaned over me. “Can you hear me?”
I attempted to nod. Bad idea. I rolled on my side and dry heaved until my empty stomach gave up the fight.
“I’m going to pick you up now, okay?” Enzo’s fingers brushed my bare hip, and he yanked his hand back like that small contact had burned him. “I’m sorry about this. I apologize in advance.”
The witch scooped me up and cradled me against his chest before Moore recovered enough to bully his way back into the conversation.
“You’re not pack, witch. We don’t need your magic.” He puffed out his chest. “Give her to me, she’s my beta.”
The possessive thread in his tone churned my gut, and I almost emptied my tender belly again.
“I’ll take whatever help I can get.” My head lolled against Enzo’s shoulder. “Go find Abram, Moore. Please?”
Moore grunted but set off at a trot. I didn’t ask why he didn’t just ping Abram mind to mind, and he didn’t say. Whatever got him gone worked for me. The threat of finding myself bundled in his arms was too much for me right now.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Enzo peered down at me, eyes on my face and not an inch lower. “I don’t see any cuts or bruising.”
“I don’t know.” I focused on breathing in and out and not losing consciousness. “I was hunting chipmunks in a pasture outside town. I heard…” I shut my eyes and focused but hit a blank space in my memory. “I can’t remember what. Everything after that third chipmunk is a haze.”
His lips pursed in consideration. “Could you find the location again?”
“Maybe by scent?” The general area was the same as where I usually hunted. “I would have left a trail.”
Assuming whoever or whatever scrambled my brains hadn’t covered it behind me.
“Aisha told me you’re working a missing persons case.”
A growl tickled the back of my throat. “Why were you talking to Aisha?”
The indulgent twinkle in his eyes made me cringe. I hadn’t meant to come off as possessive, just pissed.
“I was on my way to the lake earlier and spotted Nathalie and Aisha in the parking lot. Nathalie was checking in with the sentries and left me to babysit Aisha.” He shook his head. “Her words, not mine.”
He jostled me as he wrestled with the door. “I asked if she’d seen you around, and she said you were busy with a case in town.” He peered down at me. “Investigative work is new for you, right?”
“Very new.” Still-in-the-package new. “I’m doing a favor for a friend. This isn’t a hobby in the making or anything.”
Perhaps sensing my unease, he changed lanes in our conversation. “So Aisha pledged to Lorimar?”
“Sort of. It’s not a full induction.”
“I’m surprised Cord offered her sanctuary. Didn’t Aisha try to kill Camille?”
“A few times,” I admitted. “Cord didn’t offer her anything except a stay of execution. Aisha is here because Cam extended an olive branch.”
“Why would she do that?” He puzzled over it. “Why would Cord let her do it?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Too bad I barely had a penny to my name. “Aisha is Nathalie’s pet project, no pun intended. As long as she doesn’t stage a coup or plot to overthrow Earth with the deserters, I get to pretend she’s not here.”
“It was brave of Camille to offer her a second chance.” He gazed deep into my eyes when he said, “We all deserve at least one, right?”
Pretending exhaustion, which wasn’t much of a stretch, I turned my face into his shirt to avoid his eyes and his question. Second chances were rare, and people who used them well even rarer.
He carried me into the rental office, leaving the front door propped open for Abram. The door to Enzo’s makeshift lab stood wide, magical implements scattered across every available surface. Once inside, he settled me on a battered club chair before liberating a white sheet from one of the boxes he had yet to unpack. He wrapped me up like a tortilla before kneeling in front of me, whipping out a penlight and starting his exam. After working alongside Miguel for so many years, the guy was more than qualified to perform the basics.
“Your eyes are dilated.” He pocketed the light and rested two gentle fingers on my wrist. “Pulse is elevated.” He wrangled a stethoscope out of an unpacked box and pressed the cold metal to my back. “Breathing’s labored.”
“None of that sounds great.” The words slurred around the edges as I slumped against the back of the chair, embracing the darkness behind my eyelids. He pinched my arm, my eyes popped open, and I yelped. “What was that for?”
“Stay awake.” He rose and crossed the room to riffle through another box. “Your symptoms mimic that of a drug overdose. Warg metabolisms being what they are, I doubt that’s the culprit. Poison is a better bet. There are plenty of fae herbs that not even warg healing can counteract.”
“What are you saying?” Imminent death perked me upright.
“You’re beta.” He lifted a clear glass jar filled with small stones. “You’re doing the job of two alphas. Is it possible someone in the pack wants your position? Or wants theirs?” He grunted, unscrewing the ribbed silver lid. “If they can’t beat you head-on, they might fight dirty.”
I slumped in my chair for different reasons and thumped my head against the back. “The Lorimar wolves wouldn’t sugarcoat it if they wanted my head on a platter. Even if they tried, it’s hard to hide that kind of intent when you’re in each other’s heads so often.” Wolves get twitchy when the pecking order is off, and our pack had been chill until the Stoners arrived. “The others? The pledges? I don’t know them well enough to eliminate suspects. One of them might have alpha aspirations.” I groaned a pained sound. “I don’t want this to be true.”
“That’s because you’re a good person.” He spoke with conviction about a topic beyond his grasp. “You don’t want this to resolve so that someone you trusted betrayed you.”
“I’ve never been betrayed by someone I trusted.” Sure, people I loved had let me down. Love and trust, they weren’t mutually exclusive no matter how ideal that arrangement might sound. “I’d like to keep my streak going.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed then.” Using a pair of slender tongs, he removed a reddish stone from the jar then resealed it before returning to stand before me. “Place this under your tongue until it dissolves.”
“It’s a rock.”
“Yes, it is.” He pressed it against my lips, the rough surface warmed by his hand. “A magic rock. Now say ahhh.”
Against my better judgment, I let him place it under my tongue then sat there while the dirt-and-moss flavor dissolved like a throat lozenge. By the time it was nothing but grit in my mouth, I had a firmer grasp on reality.
“Dell?” Abram’s voice banged on my mental door.
The volume made me wince. “Present.”
“Moore said you’re hurt.”
“I’m something all right. Enzo is treating me but…” I hated to say it—to think it—after he’d defended me against Moore and cared for me, but pack was pack. Getting help from Enzo without bargaining away my firstborn ahead of time felt like breaking a taboo. “I wouldn’t mind a second opinion.”
“I’m almost to you.”
Clever Enzo, who had been studying my face, came to a realization. “Does that mean the bond is online for you?”
“Yes, it does.” I grinned with the relief of it. “That stuff gives a whole new meaning to rock candy, you know that?”
He humored me with a laugh. “Let’s try this exam again.”
I sat there like a model patient, and this time he withdrew seeming pleased with the results.
“Well, I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Hit me, doc. I can handle it.”
“You weren’t poisoned or drugged. You were bewitched, which is sort of like being hexed, except it’s more of a natural fae gift than a witchy one despite what the name implies.”
“Come again?” Maybe I was wrong, and I couldn’t handle it. “Bewitched?”
“Enchanted? Is that better?”
“How was I exposed?” Wasn’t that the kind of thing a person remembered?
The run home.
The chipmunks.
The…something.
I was drawing a blank.
“Enchantments—” he humored my preference, “—are usually seen or heard.”
A foggy memory heavy with the musk of chipmunks tickled the back of my mind, there and gone before I could grasp it.
“Dell?” Abram’s voice boomed through the entryway.
“In here,” I called.
Abram prowled into the lab like he owned the place instead of he and Enzo being equal tenants. The witch took one look at the warg’s mistrustful expression and stepped a respectful distance away, trading positions in a move so smooth as to have been choreographed.
“I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma.” Abram checked my eyes and pulse before drawing back to conduct the frank physical examination Enzo had carefully avoided. “How do you feel?”
“Pretty good, all things considered.” I cut my eyes toward Enzo. “I think he beat you to the punch.”
An indecipherable expression crossed Abram’s face. “Is that right?”
Enzo spread his hands. “There’s no debt between us.” He made sure I heard that part. “I’m here to help, and there were no limitations placed on what I could and couldn’t do in service to your pack.”
That was just the opening I needed, and I wedged myself right in there. “So, in theory, you could help with the O’Malley case?” I eyed the jar of rocks behind him. “You broke an enchantment on me. Do you think you could break one on, say, a parking lot?”
“That sounds like glamour, not an enchantment.” He pursed his lips. “Some areas of fae magic overlap Earth magic, but glamour is uniquely fae. It’s the hardest area of their magic to crack, but I can try.”
“Good deal.” I made as if to stand.
Abram pushed me back down.
“Not tonight, though.” Enzo checked the heavy silver watch on his wrist. “Wards go up at midnight, which is in about an hour and a half. I need to get in position.”
“Oh really?” That intrigued me enough not to feel the swell of disappointment that my crusade would have to wait. “Which ward?”
“Both. The one around the RV park and the one around the lake.” He smiled at my shock. “I work fast, and I work hard. I’m here to do a job, and I’m not going to laze around just because Miguel isn’t here to crack the whip.”
“It’s not that,” I rushed to correct him. “That must take a lot of magic. I’m impressed, not doubting you.”
The Garzas had earned their reputation. I knew that. I just hadn’t realized how closely Enzo was walking in his powerful brother’s footsteps.
“Sorry.” A flush tinted his cheeks. “The chip is on my shoulder, not yours.”
Abram frowned as he glanced between us then offered me his arm. “If you’re sure you’re okay, Dell, then let me walk you home.”
I accepted his help getting to my feet, relieved to find the floor beneath them solid. The worst of the jitters had worked themselves out of my system. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, Enzo. We’ll talk strategy then.”
“Sleep well.” He offered a half wave. “Do me a favor and let me sleep in, okay?”
“That I can do.” I tipped my chin. “I’ll pick you up after my lunch break. How’s that sound?”
“How about you pick me up and then we go to lunch?” he countered.
“Enzo…”
“You’ll have to explain what we’re up against, and I’ll need to refill the well after tonight.”
Abram glanced aside, hiding a smile.
“Fine.” I jabbed a finger at Enzo. “Friend lunch, right?”
“Right.” He beamed like he’d just won the lottery. “See you tomorrow.”
Abram let me keep his arm for balance. I was steady on my feet, but the wolf happily soaked up the contact, so I held on. Once we got a safe distance away, he quit hiding his smirk. “He’s pulling out all the stops, isn’t he?”
“It looks that way,” I grumbled.
“A lot of guys have adopted his strategy with great success.”
“What strategy is that? Hang around and make themselves indispensable until the girl finally says ‘What the heck? You’re already here. I might as well mate you?’”
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