If she squinted, she could almost see them dashing through the forest to get to her.
CHAPTER TWO—KELLER
“Where’s the aspirin?”
“We keep aspirin in the house?” Johnny narrowed his eyes.
“It’s supposed to be in the medicine cabinet, but it’s missing.” Keller pressed his fingertips against his temple as if that would do anything to stop the budding migraine.
“We have a medicine cabinet?”
“What do you think the far-left cabinet in the kitchen is for?”
“Kitchen supplies. Who keeps medicine in the kitchen?”
“Literally, everyone!”
“I have the aspirin.” Garret walked into the dining room and tossed the small bottle to Keller.
“Thank you.” Keller poured three pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.
“Only sociopaths dry swallow pills,” Johnny said. “That’s a known fact.”
Saying nothing, Keller looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that took up the entire northern wall of the dining room. Pearl Smart, Holly’s grandmother, loved windows. When she had bought the house, it didn’t have nearly as many windows.
Keller installed them for her nearly seven years ago. She was his first customer when he started his contracting business. He wouldn’t let her pay for the work. He was happy to do it after all she’d done for him.
Despite the fact he didn’t make a cent off the windows, everyone in the neighborhood admired his work. He’d had a steady stream of customers since he finished Pearl’s windows.
Only now had things slowed down, but he wasn’t worried. He had plenty saved up, and his expenses were minimal.
Finding Holly and bringing her home was far more important than anything else right now, even his business.
“Are you sure you should’ve taken three?” Johnny said, disrupting Keller’s thoughts. “I’d hate for you to slip into an aspirin-induced coma, if that’s even a thing.”
“Imagine if you took all the time you spend coming up with your little quips and put that toward getting Holly back,” Keller snapped.
“Oh, I don’t spend any time on the quips. They come naturally to me. I’m gifted like that.”
“Your gift is our curse,” Garret muttered. “At least pretend to be worried about Holly.”
“You think I’m not worried?” The ever-present smirk on his face vanished. “When was the last time you saw me sleep or eat? Of course, I’m worried! Just because I use humor as a poorly constructed coping mechanism doesn’t mean I’m not worried sick.”
Keller and Garret stared at Johnny, letting the silence string out between them.
“That was…intense,” Garret said.
“Yeah, because he’s usually such a mild-mannered guy,” Keller snapped.
“Are we any closer to finding Holly?” Garret asked.
Keller recognized a re-direct when he heard one. Garret was an expert at that.
“Finding her isn’t the problem,” Keller replied. “We know where she is. Trevor took her to Golden Oak.”
“I say we take a page from Loch’s book and go after them.”
Keller grit his teeth at the sound of Loch’s name. If he hadn’t been so careless during the battle, Trevor wouldn’t have been able to use him as leverage to take Holly.
“We have no proof that Loch’s found her or if he’s even alive,” Keller said.
Shortly after Holly had left with Trevor, Loch had disappeared from the house.
He left armed to the teeth, angry as hell, and hadn’t been seen by anyone since. Obviously, he intended to go to Golden Oak, but had he made it?
“Of course, he’s alive,” Johnny scoffed.
“What makes you so sure? There’s an army, ready to kill, living in Golden Oak, and I have a feeling we haven’t seen the worst of them,” Keller said. “Did you see the weapon Trevor wielded?”
“No,” Johnny replied.
“Exactly. It was a blade so thin it can only be seen when light reflects off of it. That wasn’t made by a regular blacksmith.”
“Magic, maybe?”
“Maybe. The point is, if he has a weapon like that, who is to say that’s not the only one in existence? What if Loch walked right into a wall of them?”
“He’s smarter than that,” Johnny insisted. “He’s run with the likes of them before.”
“Not when they were actively killing people and invading other territories. He’s in way over his head, which is exactly why we shouldn’t follow him,” Keller said.
“Then what are we going to do?” Garret asked, his eyes trained on the maps that covered the dining room table.
“What about the witches?” Keller turned to Johnny. “They helped us once. Can’t they help us again?”
“They’ve retreated deeper into the woods,” Johnny replied. “They spent too much of their power during the battle, which they were already too weak to handle because of all the things we had made them do.”
“I thought they replenished themselves with those weird sex crystals?” Garret asked.
“How do you even know about that?” Johnny asked, wide-eyed.
Keller looked back and forth between them.
“What sex crystals?” he demanded. “I’ve heard nothing about sex crystals before this.”
“The witches made Johnny and Holly have sex surrounded by a bunch of rocks that absorbed orgasmic energy or something.” Garret shrugged.
“Again, how do you know that?”
“I talked to one of them—the blonde. Hattie,” he said. “She broke her ankle during the battle. I helped her get back to her coven sisters.”
“And she told you that out of the blue?”
“Yeah, she was laughing hysterically about it the whole time. I think she’s a little loose in the noggin, if you catch my meaning.”
“Sex crystals and crazy witches aside,” Keller interrupted. “We need a plan.”
“I have a thought,” Johnny said. “I’m not going as far as to call it a plan.”
“Care to share?”
“Remember those two waring vampire families that lived in Gallant Green, like, two hundred years ago?”
“Vaguely. Why?” Keller asked.
“Well, things grew so tense that one family called for war. Right before the battle broke out, the two family
