Page 5

Chapter

Four

“ A nd here I didn’t think I could like him any less than I already did.”

Cecil chittered his agreement.

Bronwyn shrugged. “It was during an argument, said in the heat of the moment, which doesn’t excuse him at all, but I mention it to set the scene. He later apologized, did the whole flowers and I’d never hurt you, baby bullshit.”

“And she still filed for divorce?” I asked, my tone thick with sarcasm. “Even after he apologized all nice and everything?”

“The day after the fight. Before the flowers and empty professions of love.” Bronwyn stood, walked around the desk and dug in a drawer, producing a photograph of a white woman in her mid-forties with shoulder-length blond hair, brown eyes. “It made no difference. She’d spent the night after the fight in a hotel and only played along so she could get inside to pack her things.”

“When did her personality change?”

“Right after she packed up and left. It was like night and day, Betty. She was consulting with an attorney and buying a ticket to fly out to her sister on the East Coast one minute, and the next she was canceling everything. Even the sound of her voice changed.”

She held up her cell phone. A “live” photo of Bronwyn and Maya was on the screen. The women were taking a selfie in front of a poster for a movie that had been popular last month. Maya was holding a very large paper cup.

Bronwyn’s high, lilting laughter introduced the clip.

“… drink the whole thing and spend the movie in the bathroom,” Maya said, with a giggle.

That was it. Just a few seconds, but it was enough for me to see that Maya matched Bronwyn’s bubbly, Disney-princess energy.

“I recorded this after she withdrew the divorce papers.” Bronwyn scrolled through her phone then held it up again.

The video had been recorded in Wicked. The lighting was dark, but it was clear from the angle that Bronwyn had propped her phone on the counter next to a display of soothing bath bombs.

Maya tilted her head stiffly. “You don’t have to worry about me. It’s all fine, now. Desmond and I are stronger than ever. It was a terrible misunderstanding.”

I’d expected her not to sound as excited as she had at the movie theater. What I hadn’t expected was for her voice to have dropped several octaves.

“Yeesh,” I said, suppressing a shudder. “She sounds flat.”

Cecil did an all-over body shiver. He’d picked up on it, too.

Bronwyn’s eyes went shiny with tears. “You get it, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I get it. I’ll need everything you can give me on her schedule. Especially when Desmond isn’t around. Does she go to the gym? Grocery? Mall? Can you invite her out somewhere and let me get a good look at her?”

“I can try. Desmond’s been monopolizing her time. That video was the last time I talked to her, and that was two weeks ago. She won’t answer my calls or texts. The only reason I know she’s alive is because I sat outside her house yesterday and waited for her to check the mail. She stumbled out like she was drunk and dropped half the letters on her way back inside.” She sank into her desk chair, her normally aggressively happy nature subdued. “Something’s wrong, Betty. And I’m worried that if we don’t figure out what it is, Desmond’s going to make good on his threat.”

Bronwyn gave me the information she had, promised to send me anything else she could find, and Cecil and I headed out to the parking lot.

“I didn’t mention this to Bronwyn, but I don’t mind admitting that I’m worried. Worldwide, over fifty-one thousand women and girls were murdered by their intimate partner last year, Cecil. That’s sixty percent of female homicides, which means women are far more likely to be killed by someone who purports to love them than in any other way.”

Cecil whistled.

“I know. It’s staggering. I’m not much for memorizing statistics, but the stories in that article made it hard to forget.”

We reached the Mini. I was digging the keys out of my bag when a man bolted out from behind the building to the other side of the car. I was already chanting under my breath and reaching for the packet of soil in my pocket when it hit me that I recognized this particular man.

I put the soil back and let the chant die out.

Cecil, however, did not have my restraint. A basalt stone rocketed over the hood and struck our uninvited guest.

“ Ouch ! Godsdamn it, that hit my eye.”

“Cool it, partner. We know this creeper.” I faced our would-be assailant. “Don’t sneak up on us like that. I was just reciting femicide statistics, for gods’ sakes.”

Ronan Pallás glared at us from the other side of the car. He wore a white T-shirt with the name of his bar, Ronan’s Pub , in green over the left breast, jeans, and black matte leatherwork boots. In his mid-thirties, he had his Irish-American mother’s freckles and white skin, and the broad shoulders and muscular build of his Mexican-American father and current alpha leader .

Not only were we around the same age, we also carried the same wariness—mine evident in my sarcasm and standoffish attitude, and his in his sarcasm and secretive nature.

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was trying to catch you before you left. I honestly thought you saw me.” He opened and closed both hazel eyes in an exaggerated blink. “Why were you talking about female homicide?”

“Never mind. Just announce yourself next time.”

“Fine, but I guarantee Cecil knew it was me before he threw that rock. That gnome is a troublemaker.”

“He was protecting us,” I said, as if I hadn’t thought the same thing hundreds of times. “Better watch it. He’s got at least two more rocks and a penny in his pockets.”

Ronan shook his head. “That’s a step up from explosives, I guess.”

I tipped my head toward Cecil and chuckled. “Isn’t it cute how he thinks you aren’t carrying explosives?”

Cecil cackled.

“You’re both troublemakers,” he muttered.

“We know. It’s kind of our thing,” I said.

He sighed, raked a hand through his short, auburn hair. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

I countered with, “Why are you here? Stalking me?”

“Ah yes, the old, ‘answer a question with a question’ tactic.” His tight smile conveyed annoyance and frustration. “Fine, I’ll bite. I had to drop off some paperwork with my insurance agent around the corner and noticed your car parked here.”

“A likely story. You saw my Mini from all the way over there?”

“It’s neon-fucking-orange, Betty. The International Space Station could probably see it.”

I scrunched my nose. Shrugged. “That’s fair. To answer your question, I haven’t responded to your calls because I’m matching your energy. ”

His shoulders drooped the slightest bit. “Betty, it’s not what you think.”

“How would I know what to think? You send me texts before bed every night and yet never respond to mine. Other than right now, we haven’t spoken actual words to each other in a week.” I unlocked the door and set Cecil and my bag inside. “What do you want, Ronan? Is another wolf missing or is there something else I can do for you?”

He pressed his lips into a hard line. “I just wanted to see you, hear your voice.”

“And all those times I texted? I wanted to hear your response.” I slid into the driver’s seat, putting my bag on the floor. Cecil was already in his seat, examining his remaining rocks. “So, congratulations. Now we’re both unhappy.”

I slammed the door and rolled down the window to finish the conversation. Personally, I thought it was done, but Ronan had circled around to my side of the car, so he obviously felt otherwise. Not that his feelings or comfort were uppermost in my mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have reasons, but when I started to tell you them, I realized how they sounded.”

“How did they sound?”

“Like utter shite,” he said, with the slightest accent. A legacy from the late mother he’d so deeply loved.

“Tell me anyway.”

“I will, just not here.”

I looked up at him. He seemed tired and distracted. Matching his energy was only making things worse between us—even if he kind of deserved it. “Ronan, we said we wouldn’t do this. That we wouldn’t freeze each other out.”

“I know. I screwed up.”

It sucked, but I had to admit it. “So did I. I should’ve tracked you down and made you explain instead of getting defensive. I want this to work. This … us.”

“It’s going to work.” He put his hands on the Mini’s roof and swung his handsome face through the window. “Come to the pub. I’ll feed you and Cecil lunch. I have a to-go order from El Rancho Grande in the works and the delivery truck from La Buena Suerte Panadería dropped off an order of fresh polvorones early this morning.”

“Tacos and cookies? Mr. Pallás, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?”

“If I were, that’s precisely the way I’d go about it.” His smile widened.

Tacos and cookies. Yum. Funny, had anyone asked me a year ago how I’d feel being mated, or bonded, to a shifter, I’d have said I’d rather be dipped in honey and planted in an anthill, boob-out on a cold mammogram plate, or at a dentist’s office getting a root canal, but right now it didn’t sound so bad.

“Fine. I need to run an errand, but I can be there in twenty, thirty minutes.”

The smile that walked across his mouth was as sexy as the rest of him. “I’ll be waiting.”

“Yeah, you will.” I pushed his face out of my window, rolled it up, and pulled out of the lot.

According to Bronwyn, Maya stopped by Díaz Dry Cleaners at one o’clock every Tuesday afternoon. In the past, Maya would’ve grabbed a cappuccino for herself and Bronwyn at the café next door and stopped by Wicked for a chat before taking the cleaning back home.

The coffee stop hadn’t happened since her personality change, but Bronwyn was pretty sure she was still going to the dry cleaner because she picked up Desmond’s dress shirts there. He might’ve forbidden her from seeing Bronwyn, but he wasn’t likely to want her to stop running his errands.

“You know, Cecil, I remember a time when I didn’t do high-risk jobs like this. I went years doing nothing but crafting peace charms, casting fertilization spells for paranormal organic farmers, removing the odd hex from someone’s property…” I coasted past the dry cleaner and down the street to a newer section of La Pa loma. “Now look at me. Breaking into a coven member’s house in the middle of the day while their spouse is picking up the laundry.”

Cecil ran a tiny thumb over the edge of one of his new rocks and chittered idly. He liked breaking and entering. Viewed it as a sport.

“I know that’s in your top ten things to do on a Tuesday afternoon, but it’s not in mine. That lunch thing with Ronan? That’s what’s at the top of my list.”

Maya and Desmond lived in an upper middle-class subdivision five minutes from town. There was a lot of new construction in the area, including behind their home. I parked the Mini on a side street and approached the home from behind, Cecil on my shoulder like a mischievous little gargoyle.

I’d scaled a flood ditch and was approaching the backyard when a thunderclap of power shoved me on my ass. Cecil managed to hang on by gripping my hair, but it wasn’t an easy landing.

“The son-of-a-bastard isn’t messing around.” I sat up in the dirt. “That felt personal.”

A repulsion spell? It couldn’t be any old repulsion spell, because I had no problem sidestepping such tame witchcraft. I had a feeling this was specific to paranormals.

Cecil scampered down my arm, across my leg, and leapt off my boot, landing in the dirt just behind the fence. He turned to me and shrugged then shot over the fence and into the yard.

“ Cecil ,” I whispered as loudly as I dared. “ Get your ass over here. We don’t have time for your shenanigans right now. ”

When he didn’t instantly reappear, I resigned myself to being late for tacos and cookies and started poking at the repulsion spell. It hadn’t affected Cecil, so it wasn’t targeting all paranormals, which made sense if Desmond was worried about someone from the coven finding him out.

The more targeted a spell, the stronger it was. This one was for witches, and only witches. My guess: to keep Bronwyn away.

I stood, and, once again, the dirt on my hands, arms, and face grew red hot then vaporized and sank into my skin. Magic crashed through me in pulsing waves. I did my best to keep it under control.

This ability was still new, and I had to admit it made me nervous. It had started a month ago, and I had no idea why.

My magic came from wielding soil—using it in spells as I had at the mayor’s place, growing plants, healing sick ones, healing myself. I not only fed it power, it fed me power back, and while it wasn’t always an equal exchange in the moment, it had always worked out that way in the end.

I’d never known any earth witch who literally steamed the earth into their body like this. This was strange. I was strange.

The whole damn situation was strange.

I wished there was an earth witch around that I could talk to about it, but the only other one in town was Desmond and my recidivist gnome was currently breaking into his house because we suspected he’d zombified his wife. Something told me he wasn’t exactly someone I could call upon for a friendly chat.

I flipped through the messages on my phone, landing on the last one I’d gotten from Joon. Baek Ye-Joon was an experienced earth mage and a good guy. I trusted him so much I’d nearly sold him the Siete Saguaros. For sure, I could talk to him.

Except he was currently in Seoul, South Korea. According to my cell, it was still too early to bother him. Besides, he’d been working on an intense case involving the love-cursed son of a diplomat for the past week. He didn’t need me hassling him.

Ten minutes ticked past. Twenty. I hunkered down in case Maya came home while I was waiting. From my perspective, which was hunched behind the fence outside the boundaries of the repulsion spell, I couldn’t see the front driveway or garage, so there was no way to tell unless she went into the backyard.

I wasn’t too worried about Cecil’s safety. That gnome had more magic in his pinky finger than Desmond had in his whole body. Plus, he was tiny and knew how to make himself invisible. He’d be all right .

My phone buzzed.

Ronan: Where are you? Tacos are cold.

Me: Doing a light B&E. Nuke the tacos. Be there soon.

Ronan: You worry me, Lennox.

Cecil appeared on top of the fence. He was hauling a burlap sack the size of a beanbag.

I knew what that was. After all, I’d found twenty-eight of the suckers in my yard a few weeks ago.

Hex bag.

Cecil flung the bag at my head.

I caught it and put it in my pocket. “You neutralized the spell, right?”

The transition from warm, midday sun to cool, darkened pub was abrupt and welcome. My skin tingled as icy air from a vent near the door gusted down my back. Cecil shivered and clung to my hair behind my neck like a creepy little choker.

“Hey, Betty,” a male voice called out. “Looking good.” The owner of the voice was young and probably good-looking to most women. He was as appealing as an unbuttered slice of toast on a paper plate to me.

Toast . Damn, I was hungry.

“Hey,” I returned, making my utter lack of interest in the speaker clear.

The other men at the table, all shifters, called out similar greetings. I repeated my lifeless, “Hey,” then faced the bar. “Where’s Ronan?”

Edie Blanton was drying mugs with a checkered towel. The bartender was in her late forties and had a no-nonsense attitude that fit perfectly with the pub’s vibe.

“In the back,” she replied.

Ronan already had my favorite music playing on his phone when I sauntered into his office with Cecil. Bread’s “Make it With You” was on, and it was all I could do not to climb onto Ronan’s lap and slow dance my way into his pants.

“Saved you some cookies.” He tossed two saucer-sized, pink polvorones onto his desk.

“Are you sure you’ve had enough? You probably need these more than I do,” I heard myself say.

Ronan just stared at me. “ What ?”

I rounded the desk and ran my hands over his shoulders, massaging the hard muscles in his back. “Are you okay? You seem tense.”

Ronan peered down at Cecil, who’d leapt off my shoulder and onto the desk at the sight of the pink polvorones. He’d already unwrapped one and was sitting cross-legged on the blotter, munching on it.

“Am I being punked?”

“Would you like to be … punked?” I skimmed my lips up the side of his throat. “Is that what you’d like?”

He shivered. “I don’t know what that means, but yes. Yes, I would.”

My lips coasted over the rim of his ear. “I can do that.”

Ronan snatched up the remaining polvoron and brandished it in front of my face. “You’re telling me you don’t want to put this in your mouth right now— oh, gods, I am very much regretting saying it like that .” He wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead. “What I mean is, don’t you want my cookie?”

“Don’t you want mine?” I whispered.

“ Nope .” Ronan jerked to his feet. “Nope. This isn’t normal.”

He scooped up Cecil then hoisted me over his shoulder, firefighter style, and ran out of his office and down the short hall, where he unlocked the door to the stairs that led up to his apartment. He took the steps two at a time up to the living room, dumped me on his sofa, and set Cecil on the coffee table .

The gnome continued eating his cookie, entirely unfazed by the change of scenery.

“ What’s wrong with her ?” Ronan yelled down at him. “This woman would shove her own grandmother to the ground to get her hands on a bakery polvoron. And what’s with the sex kitten act?”

“ Act ?” If he’d slapped me, it would’ve hurt less. My chest ached. My nose itched, and tears filled my eyes. “What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong?”

“Stop it, Betty. Whatever this is, stop it.”

He looked genuinely distressed, which wasn’t acceptable. My man was not to feel any measure of discomfort in my presence.

I’d failed him.

“I’m sorry.” I dried my tears and sat up straight. “I shouldn’t have gotten so emotional, dear.”

“ Dear ? Fuck me,” he grumbled under his breath.

I pulled my top over my head and dropped it on the sofa. Then I reached behind me to unlatch my bra.

Ronan’s eyes went very, very wide. “Cecil, put that cookie down and fix this right godsdamn now.”

Cecil looked from Ronan to me. He set his polvoron on a paperback thriller and jumped onto the sofa. I slingshotted my bra at Ronan’s head, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. I didn’t understand what the problem was. He’d asked for this.

Silly man. He must be playing. “Come here, my sweet, sexy Ronan.”

“What the hell?” He clapped his hand over his eyes and held out the other hand. “Uh-uh. You stay back until we figure this out, Betty, dear .”

I sidestepped Cecil and threw myself into Ronan’s arms. I wriggled my hands between us, rucked his shirt up to his neck, and squeezed him against me. My breasts tightened along with every other inch of skin that made contact with his. Goosebumps was too tame a word for it. I was being strangled by what was left of my clothing .

I moaned. Gods above and below, I needed fewer clothes and more him .

Ronan breathed in gulps and wheezes. “By the moon, hurry up, Cecil .”

“Why are you fighting this?” I reached between us, dancing my fingers over the rock-hard erection behind the fly of his jeans. “It’s obvious you want me. You even said, ‘Fuck me,’ just now. I don’t understand. Is this a game?” I brightened. “It is, isn’t it? Oh, I can play games. I’m good at games.”

“No, it’s … damn it, Betty, I didn’t mean it literally.” He stroked a hand over my hip and up my spine to the back of my neck. “Damn it all.” He quickly dropped his arm back to his side. “ Godsdamn it, gnome .”

Cecil scaled the back of my leg to my pants pocket. The hex bag hit the floor.

Cold reality splashed me in the face.

“What the hell just happened?” I jerked away from Ronan and wrapped my arms around my breasts. Snatched up my bra. “Oh my goddess, the hex bag. Ronan, I’m sorry.”

“Are you decent?” he asked, his voice cracking like an adolescent boy’s.

Normally, my response would’ve been a flirty, “Never,” but it didn’t feel appropriate to joke around right now. “Hang on a minute, I need to yell at my partner. Cecil, you said the spell was neutralized !”

He chittered something and shrugged.

“Just because it didn’t have any effect,” I put on my bra and pulled my T-shirt over my head, “on you, doesn’t mean it was neutralized. What if I’d been around a different man? One less trustworthy. This could’ve gone very badly.”

Cecil shook his head and pointed at Ronan. Then he chittered something I understood at once, because I’d been thinking the same thing.

It wouldn’t have happened with another man, because it had only affected the way I’d interacted with Ronan . I’d walked past several men on the way to his office and not been the slightest bit tempted by any of them. Obviously, I felt some sort of connection with him. Husband-wife sort of connection.

The implications of that gave me the shivers. For several reasons—good and bad.

“You can open your eyes,” I said, resignedly. “I apologize for what just happened. I did something stupid and was infected by a hex bag.”

He tugged his T-shirt down over those glorious abs and blinked his eyes open. “There are aphrodisiac hex bags?”

There were, actually, but the goddesses got very pissed at the types of witches who sold them. They didn’t often intervene in the lives of magicals, but when they did and found those sorts of things? They got fiery angry. Immolation angry.

That didn’t mean it didn’t happen, though.

“This isn’t an aphrodisiac hex bag. It’s a zombie-wife hex bag.”

“Did it make you think you were my wife?”

No, but it was easier to say, “Kind of,” than explain that something in me felt deeply connected to him.

“Whoa. Is that how you’d act if you were?” He grinned and picked up a pad of paper on the bar. “Adding wedding rings to the shopping list, if so.”

“Wise ass,” I muttered then said in a louder voice, “I’m investigating someone we believe spelled his estranged wife into subservience.” I looked at Cecil, who’d picked up his cookie and was happily chomping it again. “Well, less believe , and more are very fucking certain now.”

“Who is this guy? I’ll happily punch his teeth into the wall if you need me to.” Ronan dropped the notepad and the smile. His eyes flashed gold. “Men like that give the rest of us a bad name.”

I smiled, warmed that he’d had the same reaction I had. “I think it’s more that men like you are few and far between.”

He adjusted the front of his jeans and awkwardly cleared his throat. “Maybe don’t talk to me in that throaty voice. I’m trying to get a hold of myself over here.”

The timing was absolute garbage, but I’d never wanted to back him through the doorway to his room, throw him on the bed, and climb him like a jungle gym as much as I did right now. Even the sexual effects of the hex bag paled in comparison to how I felt now. I was kicking myself for letting life—moving into Mom’s house, Ronan’s weird hours—get between us.

“No need for you to punch his teeth in,” I said. “I’m going to do it myself.”

“You’re going to beat this guy up?”

“Yes. With magic.” I dug my cell phone out of my purse and flipped through my contacts until I landed on the one I was looking for. “And shame.”