I left them to Kaz’s care and turned my attention to Tanner. His face was a better color, and some of the stress lines across his forehead were less prominent.
“How’re you?” I asked, sliding a raggedy multi-hued quilt over his bare leg.
“I suspect my knee’s wrenched. There’s too much swelling to really tell, but I should be okay until I can get an herbal poultice on it.”
Shit. That reminded me Belle’s bag of tinctures was sitting on my bureau. I had to take my first dose before bed. “No more leaping off my porch deck or chasing my exes through the woods for a while, okay?”
“Probably not until tomorrow morning, at the earliest,” he replied, a pale twinkle lighting his tired golden eyes. The same twinkle had been there in the orchard, only much stronger. And if Tanner and I had been the only ones in the house at that moment, I might have kissed him. That’s what stress did to me—made me want to kiss strange men.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked, stroking my hand where it rested on the couch beside his hip.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, clearing the memory of his mouth devouring mine and the way every element of the landscape around and under us had urged me on. “It’s been a week for the history books.”
“It’s not over yet. You haven’t said anything about the ritual.” He rubbed his thumb over the top of my hand and slid his palm under mine, interlacing our fingers. “But start with filling me in on what’s going on with Harper.”
“Tanner, I—”
“Calliope.” He squeezed my fingers and peered at me from under his lashes. “Something big is happening here, on this island. And it’s affecting me and you and your sons and maybe even others like us. I don’t want to leave you, and I can’t go back to my office in Vancouver after what just happened with your ex.” He pulled my forearm across his chest and drew me closer. “I can’t pretend I didn’t kiss you in the orchard. Damn near every hour, there’s some new revelation or incident, and you’re too close to—if not directly within—the center of it all.”
I left my hand in his and turned away from the intensity of his gaze and the truth in his words. “Harper has feathers. Or what look like enlarged follicles, like what a chicken has after molting and the new feathers are starting to come in.” I shrugged. “Not weird, not weird at all. Just another normal daily occurrence in the Jones household.”
“Given his affinity to winged creatures, I’m not surprised,” he said, his voice soft enough only I could hear. “I think you and your sons have been under Doug’s influence for a very long time. For Harper and Thatch, possibly their entire lives. The coming days and weeks are going to be very interesting.”
I wiggled my arm from underneath his and leaned away. “You think there’re more interesting reveals on their way? Because if you tell me Thatch is going to start taking all his food to the stream to wash it before he eats and might grow a bushy tail and become even more nocturnal, I might lose it. Seriously, Tanner, what more could happen?”
“Nothing you can’t handle, especially if you three stick together and allow help from those of us who are used to dealing with this kind of a thing.”
Tanner’s touch lit the fires of my erotic imagination while his words poked at my indignation. I neither needed nor wanted a man to try to take charge of things right now. Offer assistance? Sure. Take over? No way.
“Are we like your latest case studies?” I kept most of the sarcasm out of my voice. But not all.
“In a purely observational way, yes. But I can’t look at you, or them,” he said, tilting his head toward the trio at the table, “without it being very personal too. Wessel. Kaz. River. They’ve become family. There are fewer and fewer of us druids and witches and other Magicals, so when we find others, the tendency is embrace and enfold.”
“Except when they’re like Doug. And his brother.”
“They seem the antithesis of the kind of magical beings Cliff and Abi have been protecting.”
I nodded my head. We could agree on that point. “Those two are raising a field full of red flags. The boys were with Doug all weekend, and from what they told me, he appears to have no problems affording a new condo in Vancouver.”
“Money’s been an issue in the past?”
“Pfft, you have no idea.” My attention had been divided between talking with Tanner and keeping an eye on Harper. Kaz straightened and started to step away. I noticed a beat of hesitation before he came over to the couch.
“May I join you?” he asked, pointing to a side chair. He turned to Tanner and lifted the ice pack to examine the injured knee. “How’re you doing?”
“Knee’s going to be fine,” Tanner said. “It’s these three I’m worried about.”
“I’ve seen this before, in other teens who’re straddling that cusp between puberty and adulthood. They’ve gone through all those hormonal changes within a relatively small window of time, and now their bodies are trying to settle into the next phase, kind of like they’re figuring out who they are while being armed with all this terrific new equipment. That said, I’ve only seen this feathering phenomenon once before. Up on First Nations lands in the Northwest territories.”
Tanner grabbed the back of the couch and shifted to sit up straighter. “I need to hear more. I’ve had a trip up there on the back burner. Maybe I should move it forward.”
Kaz nodded and turned to me. “I think I know a good man for Harper to meet, but I have to speak with him first.” He pinched the
