“MOM,” read the first text, followed quickly by “PIZZA” and “Dad says he needs our help this weekend.”
Funny how my sons always had time to communicate when the topic was their hunger. Tanner moved ahead to a tent displaying desserts while I texted Thatch and Harper.
“CHORES”
“DO THEM”
“HOME SOON”
I looked up in time to see a smiling young woman with chin-length hair and a spiked collar place a lattice-topped pie into a box. Her profile was familiar and her name was on the tip of my tongue, though I couldn’t retrieve it. Tanner handed over a credit card while I searched my brain.
“This okay?” he mouthed, pointing at the box being wrapped with string.
I nodded and waved my arm in the direction of the bank of shops and restaurants flanking the side of the temporary market. I ordered two pizzas to go at the Italian place and found an empty table where I could sit and wait. My unexpected dinner companion cast a long glance over the milling crowd before heading in my direction.
“Calli,” Tanner said, his voice low, “put down your phone and look at me like we’re flirting or something.” He slid the red-lettered pie box onto an empty chair. “Don’t look out the window. Look at me.”
Working against the urge to turn my head and do precisely what he’d asked me not to, I placed an elbow on the table and rested my chin in my hand. With poured concrete under my leather-shod feet and glass and metal to my right, I couldn’t get a read on what might be happening outside the restaurant.
“We’re being monitored,” he said.
“Since we left the orchard?”
Tanner shook his head and reached across the table to touch his fingertips to my elbow. “No, since we entered the market.”
“How do you know?”
“They’re probing. It’s subtle, but I can feel it.”
“Can you sense what they’re looking for? Or who?” Magicals got hungry too, and I’d noticed a couple of familiar signatures as soon as I exited my car.
The young man behind the counter hit the order bell. “Two Margherita pizzas.”
“That’s ours,” I said.
Off-balance at Tanner’s mild alarm—and the sensation of his fingertips on my bare skin—I stood a little too suddenly. My chair teetered and quickly righted, Tanner’s foot looped around the closest leg. While I paid, he retrieved the boxes and stacked the pie container on top.
“Can we take your car?” he asked.
I nodded. “But where’s yours?”
“I let Wes and Kaz use my truck. I’ll have them pick me up when they’re done.” He held the door open with his back. When I passed in front of him, he tensed. “Calliope, take the food.”
“Why?” My left arm brushed his chest, meeting a solid wall of warm, tensed muscle.
“Because I’m not sure what it is we might be walking into and I can’t defend us if I’m also trying to save our dinner.” Tanner hitched the straps of my bags higher on my shoulders before handing over the stack of fragrant boxes. The bottom one was hot. He bent forward, brushed his lips against my cheek and whispered into my ear, “Go to your car. Put the food on the floor, start the engine, and wait for me.”
My urge to gawk at his backside cooled even as my cheeks burned. I hightailed it to where I’d parked, keeping my eyes forward and daring any driver to get in my way.
Damned if I was going to play the damsel in distress.
And damn Tanner for making it so easy to pretend there was something between us.
I stashed the pizzas and the pie behind the driver’s seat, readjusted my cross-body bag, and leaned against the car door, slowly scanning the street and sidewalks. If he could feel the presence of another magical, then so could I.
Maybe. Probably.
It was worth a try, especially with the boost to my confidence earlier in the day. Slipping off my boots and wincing at the gravel underfoot, I kept my eyes open—always a challenge when I was sensing—and fed my awareness out in concentric circles.
Chapter 4
I couldn’t recall the last time I tapped into the energy of downtown Ganges with the purpose of tracking Magicals. The energy was always thicker in the summer and especially on market days, when the collective magic resembled a tangled mass of root balls. Familiar signatures—ones I could attach to specific shops and offices—burst here and there, like tiny buds and flowers.
I gloated when I located Tanner’s citrine-colored signal in the park. The druid was likely surrounded by toddlers and hula-hoopers and…
Oh! A peculiar, solitary point tugged on a section of entangled energies at the near side of the marina. The knot was close to where prop planes took on and dropped off passengers, which could mean whoever was giving off the signal had just arrived, or was preparing to leave. Wiping the soles of my feet on the inside of my pant legs, I wiggled back into my boots and headed in the direction of the harbor. I had to cross a main thoroughfare and jostle my way through clusters of bodies. Holding firm to the unknown entity, I kept to as straight a line as possible.
Once across the busy street, I released one foot from its boot and wiggled my toes into the soil underneath the shrubbery lining the sidewalk.
Maybe Tanner was on to something with his quick on, quick off footwear.
The ominous presence pulsed oily and cold among the boats bobbing in the crowded harbor. My toes recoiled. Following the line of energy to its source had just gotten exponentially harder. There was no way I was going swimming in that water.
Moving forward, I tried to be unobtrusive. I mean, I lived here. I knew almost all the shop owners and the staff at the marina, and on a normal day it could take me twenty minutes to get from where I was to where
