When he glared at me and ran fingers through his close-cropped hair, I held his gaze. Now that he’d shared his secret, I waited to see if his animal side would show. “I’ve known you were a witch for a while, Calliope. Just never had a good opening line on the tip of my tongue.”
Yeah, Jack was a shifter all right. The wolf peeked out, amber facets shining in his eyes, and headed toward hopeful before making a U-turn back to Officer Jack.
Once I grasped that piece of the puzzle, the control he held over himself made a lot more sense. So did the zing zipping between us the first time he’d showed up at the house. I twined my fingers through the cords looped around my neck to remind myself what was at stake.
“I’m getting concerned,” he said. “This is the second time in two weeks I’ve been called out here because of a disturbance.”
“And the last time you were here, I told you—”
“You were lying, but I couldn’t say anything in front of Lewis. My partner’s human.”
The last time Jack—and Lewis—had parked their RCMP-issued vehicle at the end of my driveway, a druid had just hauled my ex-husband and his twin brother from the woods behind my house. The men had not come out quietly.
Rifling through my options, I decided I could present Jack with a partial truth. “I’ve been having some trouble with Doug. That night, he and his brother, Roger, thought it would be fun to harass me in my own backyard.”
“You could have called me for help.”
“A friend helped me strengthen the protective wards around the property. I figured the boys and I were okay.” I shrugged, tried to keep my expression nonchalant, and left out the bit about the friend being a druid with a wolfy side.
A woman’s voice called, “Calli!” from my house.
Jack’s gaze traced a line from my face to the deck fronting my A-frame. I swiveled on my heels and confirmed the voice was Rowan’s. She was a local OB-GYN doctor and witch. She was also one of my newest Magical friends.
“Everything’s okay,” I yelled, waving. “I’ll be right there.” The night air had dropped a good ten degrees since red-and-blue revolving lights had announced Jack’s arrival. I rubbed my upper arms and shivered. “Jack, I can handle the stuff with Doug. I promise.”
He gave my shoulder a brief squeeze. If my response trigger wasn’t so skittish, I might have leaned into the masculine solidity of his chest, let him wrap his arms around me, and confessed every bit of worry. But my life was complicated enough without muddying a fairly straightforward relationship.
“I believe you,” he said. “But if another complaint comes in, I’m going to have to take statements. From you and from everyone else on the property, whether they’re Magical or human.” The wolf reappeared in Jack’s eyes, this time clinical and assessing. “Be careful, Calliope. Something’s coming, and it doesn’t smell right.”
A prickly silence grew between us. Jack wanted to push, and I wasn’t going to give him any more information. I was going to gather information. Using one big toe, I nudged aside a few nuggets of gravel and briefly closed my eyes. Jack’s energy glimmered like molten minerals in the crack that opened up between my toe and where he stood.
Gotcha.
He glanced toward my house once more then turned toward his car. “You might want to do a complete overhaul of those wards,” he said, raising his voice as he walked away. “I didn’t feel a damn thing when I got out of my car.”
His parting shot stung. I stayed put, the bottoms of my feet whimpering about the gravel, until the retreating sound of the police car was swallowed into the night. The glimmering strand connected to him snuffed out.
Fuck.
And ouch. I took a couple steps to the side until I stood on more forgiving ground, shoved my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, and for one protracted moment, let the waves of overwhelm I’d been holding at bay crash around me. I started to shake.
Jack was right. And wrong. The something he felt coming was already here, and the druid the RCMP officer had sensed—Tanner Marechal—was responsible for its presence.
The something was called the Apple Witch. In their shared pasts, Tanner and the Apple Witch had been lovers. And for weeks this summer, maybe longer, she had pursued him and in the process of doing so, latched on to me. And now, the druid was out there, beyond the matte black trees and sky, maybe beyond this island—way beyond—looking for her.
Recounting all that in my head while waiting for my joints to regroup enough I could walk tall and face the expectant houseful made it hard to take a full breath.
Tanner had to find the Apple Witch. Two of my party guests were in her safekeeping, at my behest, and I knew in my gut she was unpredictable. Asking her for help had been a decision made in a moment of adrenaline-fueled desperation.
I hoped I wouldn’t regret that decision. Because those special guests, Abigail and Clifford Pearmain, owned the orchard where two hidden folk had been murdered. I shivered and rubbed my upper arms.
Before Tanner left to pursue the Apple Witch, he’d entrusted the ever-present pouch he wore to me. Revisiting the moment he snugged the cords over my head, my heartbeat sent the pouch bouncing against my sternum. I could see the squarish leather adornment through the thin cotton of my T-shirt, even with my back to the porch light.
I wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with the idea of guarding an object of mystical origin and magical potential. But as Tanner made me the promise he would find the Apple Witch, and Clifford and Abigail, he deemed the pouch important enough to leave in my care.
Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the pouch had to stay out of
