by Layla Nash
Chapter 2
Evershaw
Evershaw couldn’t waste time. Rumors were circulated too fast to manage, and he had real problems to address with Smith before the remnants of a rogue pack got a foothold in his territory. So he pushed to meet Smith that night instead of the next morning, even though the chosen location was creepy as fuck—the old cemetery in neutral territory. He thought maybe Smith intended to send a message to him, maybe a threat, but in the end it was because he met with someone else—some kid, a girl in clothes that smelled of fresh dirt and fertilizer and healthy plants.
He didn’t give her a second look and instead dismissed her, since her business couldn’t possibly have been more important than his. He only dealt with life and death, and he sure as fuck couldn’t jeopardize his pack’s safety and security by kowtowing to some random secretary that Smith chose to meet in the weirdest possible location. Who the fuck held meetings in a cemetery?
But the girl’s attitude changed from irritated to downright fucking pissed. Pissed. The air around her froze and Evershaw felt it in a breeze against his skin—fury. Straight-up fury. His wolf started paying attention, but Evershaw wasn’t naive enough to let the kid know she’d gotten his attention. He wouldn’t cede the offensive to her; he refused to go on the defensive, ever, since that meant he’d been put back on his heels and wasn’t in a position to strike out. He didn’t have time for defense or other bullshit.
Smith’s eyebrows arched politely as he glanced between them, and damn it all if the old man’s eyes twinkled with mirth. Evershaw’s jaw clenched as the girl gave him a scathing look, eyeing him like he was some dirtbag sniffing after her at a bar, and she said, “The animals aren’t worth mentioning.”
The animals. A growl started in his chest that he barely managed to tamp down, still unwilling to let her see she’d pissed him off, and before he could come up with a way to put the human in her place, Smith bowed to the girl. The old man actually bowed, like the kid was somehow important enough to justify it, and said he was in her debt. Evershaw’s skin crawled. The old man never bowed to him, and he was an alpha. Not that Evershaw expected someone that powerful to scrape and snivel around him—at least he mostly treated the alphas like they were his equals, even if they all knew it wasn’t true.
The girl sniffed in dismissal as she ignored Smith’s obeisance, then turned and flounced away like she was queen of the fucking world. It set Evershaw’s teeth on edge, almost as much as the hint of her true scent—wild as tropical flowers but with an unfamiliar edge—reached him through the mud from her boots.
He folded his arms over his chest and turned to Smith, refusing to watch the girl disappear into the darkness like a wraith. “Have you seen any signs of the djinn?”
Smith’s attention remained on where the girl had gone, and he took a deep breath before he spoke, so soft that Evershaw wasn’t sure if the old man wanted him to hear. “She is so young to have that power. So very young. Her road will be difficult.”
Evershaw snorted. “Don’t let a kid push you around. Snap your fingers or do whatever it is you do and get her in line.”
“Someone like that... It is best to take a different approach.” Smith drew himself up and faced Evershaw, apparently no longer concerned about where the girl had disappeared. “She is a very powerful witch, wolf. It would be wise for you not to antagonize her.”
“A witch? There are witches running around?” He hadn’t expected that. While he knew that magic existed, since he’d seen Smith work it, he kind of figured witches would be fairy tale bullshit. Like most people believed about shifters. “Who controls them?”
“No one.” Smith glanced over Evershaw’s shoulder, making the back of his neck prickle, then smiled very slightly as he focused on the alpha. “So they are wildcards in my world, Evershaw. Now. Speaking of wildcards, you are curious about the djinn?”
“Yeah. There are other things stirring and I want to make sure he’s not behind any of it.” Evershaw put aside the issue of the witch. “Parts of BadCreek are organizing and we’re trying to get ahead of it.”
“Are you concerned about the threat from the djinn or the threat to your territory?”
“It’s the same thing.” Evershaw didn’t care whether the ErlKing assumed he was a self-serving asshole who only cared about territory. Evershaw halfway believed it himself. “There’s no telling whether that... thing came back crazy.”
“One could say the same thing about me,” the ErlKing said, and it gave Evershaw the willies that the old man’s pupils turned vertical like a cat’s. “It was a very dark place for a very long time, Evershaw, and I knew I would escape... eventually. I also knew I could exact revenge in a very... satisfying manner. The djinn has spent millennia imprisoned and exploited. He was remarkably well-balanced, for all that. I do not think he is crazy.”
“Fine, maybe he isn’t crazy.” Evershaw didn’t actually believe that shit; anyone who’d been locked up that long went nuts. He pictured the horrible idea of wild animals in zoos, rocking back and forth and pacing the confines of their cages. Seemed like the same thing. “But he’s got an agenda and a reason for staying in the city. He can go anywhere in the world, and he’s still hanging around here. It doesn’t make sense.”
Smith grunted and rubbed his chin, pondering as he stared out over the cemetery. “Perhaps he simply does not know where to go. I do not know the why of what he does, wolf. Why do you suspect him of presenting a threat to you? And do you speak for the Council, or only yourself?”
“I speak for my pack,” he said, and resisted the urge to growl. “The men who remained from BadCreek, the ones we didn’t kill or send away, have organized. There are women in the pack and a few children. They’re on the hunt for territory outside the city, and have begun to challenge our borders. If you don’t want a war in this city, we have to do something.”
“What makes you think I care whether wolf packs scrabble among themselves for a few miles of territory?”
The old man’s eyes flashed silver and the shadow of antlers hung like a ghost over his head. Evershaw’s wolf side bristled, prepared to fight. It was only occasionally that he caught sight of the ancient being that was the ErlKing. It called up thoughts of human sacrifice and blood rites all under the full moon. He tensed, watching the old man fight off the ancient demons and slowly drift closer to human.
It was only then that Evershaw spoke, when the antlers had disappeared and the silver mixed with green in the old man’s eyes. “We cannot risk the humans finding out. The Council is not interested in dealing with the issue until conflict breaks out, and since the new pack is still on the outskirts of the city, none of the rest of them give a shit.”
“And the O’Sheas?”
Evershaw bared his teeth in irritation, struggling with his own control. “They are all perfectly pleased with the situation. Their territory is sufficient, and it is not directly threatened. Only mine.”
“And they have both found their mates, have they not?” Smith smiled just a touch as he studied Evershaw, the cruel bastard.
Evershaw wouldn’t fall for it. He hadn’t found his mate. He’d stopped looking. He wasn’t going to wait around for someone else to leave him. If he ever brought a woman into his life so he could have the kids he wanted, he’d just have to make sure that she loved him more than he loved her. If he had to walk away, it wouldn’t be that hard. There was no fucking way he’d give anyone the kind of power that a mate had over their other half.
And it didn’t help that he’d once propositioned Ruby O’Shea with what would have been a marriage of convenience. She almost went through with it despite knowing that her true mate was one of the Chase brothers. Evershaw had to be the bigger man and tell her to get her ass back to her mate. She still hadn’t forgiven him.
Evershaw folded his arms over his chest and wished he’d brought his cousin, Todd, with him. “They are. I don’t think that has any bearing on the conversation.”
“I’ve fo
und when things are settled and going well at home, one is less likely to stir up trouble elsewhere.”
“Are you suggesting I’m trying to get in a territory war because I’m not getting laid?”
Smith’s smile grew still more. “When someone is a whole person, they seldom search for conflict. In my experience. And since you shifters are not whole until you’ve found your mate, I would only assume you would be less concerned with fighting every pack in the vicinity and more interested in protecting your pack at home.”
Evershaw snorted. “I call bullshit. That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. If I found a mate, I’d conquer the fucking world to please her. No one turns into a homebody and a shrinking fucking violet because they’re getting it on the regular.”
Smith held his hands up in surrender. “Whatever lets you sleep at night, young man. I will reach out through some of my friends to see if the djinn has any business to discuss. I suggest you engage with the new pack peacefully and see if you cannot come to an amicable resolution sooner rather than later.”
Evershaw grunted and glanced at his watch. “Great. More fucking diplomacy. I liked it better when we could just resort to single combat at dawn.”
It was Smith’s turn to roll his eyes. “Be careful what you wish for, wolf. It was not only the cat that curiosity killed.”
It didn’t feel like a threat, but there was no telling with the old man. Evershaw shook his head and headed for his SUV. “Great. I’ll keep that in mind. Let me know if you hear anything.”
The ErlKing made a sound suspiciously like a chuckle. “Be careful what enemies you make, young man.”
Evershaw waved at him over his shoulder and focused on the SUV. He had more business to take care of back at the pack house. He didn’t have time for pleasantries or cryptic messages and bullshit warnings. Evershaw had plenty of enemies already; what were a couple more?
Chapter 3
Deirdre
I spent the next week dividing my time between the greenhouse that belonged to the florist I worked for and the greenhouse behind the creaky old house I’d inherited from my mother. The weather had turned to spring—rainy and warm, clammy, with occasional chilly spells. The florist was concerned for her business, of course, and the full schedule of spring weddings, but I kept my greenhouse because I enjoyed the quiet and peaceful silence. I would leave the windows open so bees and birds could flit through, buzzing and humming, and had even put up a makeshift hive in the garden behind the greenhouse. Fresh honey would be welcome, not just for tea but for spells. It was a wonderful bonding agent for magic.
I tended the night garden when the moon rose, wandering among the plants and deadheading flowers to encourage more to bloom, and waited until dawn to look after the poisoner’s garden that took up a shielded part of the garden behind the greenhouse. It used to have a picket fence around it, but honeysuckle vines had grown so thick around the dangerous plants that the fence was barely more than a white toothpick through the vines.
The yew twig Smith gave me had taken root well in a small container in the greenhouse, and I left it to itself for some time. It was only when I went into the greenhouse to clip herbs and flowers and twigs for a spell or charm that I remembered it wasn’t just a random little sprout.
Making more charms filled my day off and parts of the night. I hadn’t slept well in a very long time, since before Mom passed away, and it only got worse with time. My thoughts raced and a whirlwind of spells raced through me until I was lost in a flurry of possibilities. New spells and charms and even hexes gripped me in the night, until it was just as easy to sit up and write them all down as it would have been to stay in bed awake.
Luckily I never had to work the counter at the florist. Maggie, who owned the shop with her sister and daughter, had a black thumb of death when it came to plants and flowers, but she loved customers and weddings and bridal showers and every sort of social event that I loathed. She left me to putter around in the greenhouse and garden behind the shop, and in the much larger greenhouse outside the city. It wasn’t too far from my house, which was itself far enough from the city that I could still sort of see the stars every now and then.
I didn’t have nosy neighbors, which helped since as a witch I didn’t need anyone poking themselves into my business. It was kind of hard to hold moonlit rituals in the backyard, naked and covered in paint and formal headdresses and all kind of shit, if the neighbors worried about property values and whether the house had fresh paint on it. Fertility rites and bonfires tended to drive the real estate prices down, or so I’d been told. My aunt tried to talk me into selling the house, or “donating” it to become a coven house, since it was large enough for half a dozen people to live in it comfortably, but I wasn’t about to just hand over the only sanctuary I had left.
I trimmed the nightshade in the garden, clipping away berries, and juggled the gloves and clippers and waste as my cell phone rang. My aunt called, and I almost ignored it. It was late enough I might have been able to sleep a few hours before the magical noise kicked up again, and if Estelle wanted something, it would take more than a couple hours before I’d be free.
Yet family obligations—and coven obligations—still remained. So I answered and tried to keep my tone neutral. “Hi, Estelle.”
“Deirdre,” she said, not bothering with any pleasantries. “We’re having a meeting. I sent you the message three days ago. Have you decided to leave the coven?”
I had to take another steadying breath. I’d taken a break from any coven work after Mom passed away, because I couldn’t stand to face magic and witches and anything else that reminded me of what I’d lost when she left. Estelle never let me forget that I’d “turned my back on them” and “walked away.” Forget that I’d needed to mourn and heal myself for a while. It was always about the coven, and always, always about Estelle.
“I must have missed that email,” I said.
“We’re at Palmer’s house,” she said. “Get over here.”
Then she hung up. I closed my eyes and put my phone down and resisted the urge to fill my pockets with belladonna so I could slip some in her tea later. She was family. She was the only family I had left, for the most part. I couldn’t abandon that, or the coven. They all remembered my mother, and they were a link to her that I wasn’t ready to give up.
So I put away my shears and gloves, washed my hands, and pulled on a hoodie to ward off the slight chill in the air. I didn’t bother to change my clothes, because I didn’t really care what my aunt thought. She’d complain even if I showed up in a three-piece suit and an up-do.
I definitely took my time and dawdled on the long drive to the other side of the city, and I may have just stopped at all the yellow lights instead of trying to speed through. Mom gave me grief for being passive-aggressive, but sometimes it was the only way to deal with the frustration of where life had bogged down. I wasn’t ready to leave the city and my house behind, but I couldn’t really move on from the coven unless I did. So I was stuck, physically and emotionally and magically.
Palmer had a generic, cookie-cutter house in a generic, cookie-cutter suburb that gave me hives as I drove up and parked on the street. Half a dozen other cars lined the street and meant walking farther than I really wanted to; I even sat in my car and debated whether I could just tell my aunt I’d gotten a flat tire on the way and they should just do whatever they were going to do without me.
But I hiked up my big girl pants and gripped the steering wheel, closing my eyes so I could center myself. I needed my little rituals before I faced the coven. In some ways, it was the only way I could face anyone outside my greenhouses.
“I am Maureen’s daughter. I am Deirdre, named for my grandmother, descended from a long line of powerful witches.” I whispered it to myself, taking strength from all the things I was. “I am stronger than the circumstances that confront me. I have the power of the world before me, ready to be used. I have the Sight, to see through deception. I have the love an
d guidance of my mother and her mother and all their mothers before us. I am the heart of magic. I am Deirdre, Maureen’s daughter.”
It still tied a knot in my throat, but I no longer cried when I said my mother’s name. The familiar cold persona settled over me and slid into all the cracks and crevices where the world left damage behind. It formed a protective shell and completely locked away my emotions. I’d started using the ritual after Mom died and I still needed to go to work and face the world to pay the bills. I had no one else to rely on, and the florist didn’t have much paid leave. So I pretended. I could pretend for a while that I was normal and fine and everything was okay, but it grew harder and harder. Eventually I just had to numb myself, to create a wall. I could be true to who I was inside my house and in the greenhouse, but otherwise... The wall protected me from everyone else.
Whatever irritation I felt at my aunt and the coven’s imposition on my night melted away as I walked down the well-lit and perfect sidewalk. Not even dandelions grew in the uniformly green grass across the lawns. How uninteresting. The door opened before I’d barely set foot on the welcome mat, and Palmer smiled at me from inside. “Glad you could make it, Deirdre.”
“Estelle insisted,” I said, nodding as I stepped past him into the house.
He was relatively young as witches went, although still older than me. And single, as my aunt often reminded me. She wanted me to marry Palmer and start popping out witch babies, since there weren’t a whole lot of male witches with any sort of power and no one in the next generation at all. Most of the witches in the coven had drifted to us from other covens and cities, and none of them had offspring or were of an age to create more.
Palmer was nice enough, though he was as bland as his house. Uninspiring. It was hard to even picture him getting revved up enough to have sex, which would probably be vanilla and missionary and over too fast. I kept those thoughts behind the mask as I kicked off my shoes in the foyer so I wouldn’t spread manure through his spotless house. Why a single dude needed a five-bedroom spread in a posh neighborhood didn’t make a lick of sense to me, but they all thought I was odd for staying in the rattletrap clapboard monstrosity that was my family’s home.