“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 in 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.
I called the something 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 onto 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 the Apple Witch’s sight.
Fuck. The past really could come back to haunt you. And slice up your lawn and steal your friends.
“Calliope! Are you coming?” My grandfather’s voice boomed across the yard.
My grandfather. I snorted. Searched the sky for Orion’s Belt and traced the collection of stars comprising my favorite constellation. My grandfather’s appearance on my roof at the end of last night’s chaos should have been the shock of my adult life. Instead, having a winged man swoop down the long roofline, land on the grass, and call me granddaughter was par for the course. My life had taken on a decidedly wild and unpredictable rhythm, and his arrival was just another beat.
Enough me time. I made my way toward the homey light and up the porch stairs, to the man framed in the doorway.
“Trouble?” he asked, holding the screen door open.
“No. And yes,” I answered. “Turns out my high school buddy, Jack, is a wolf.”
Christoph, my paternal grandfather and bird-man—no last name yet—nodded. “The Kaukonens are a good family, Calliope. I wouldn’t rush into sharing all of your secrets with him, but I don’t think you have to hold back.”
This relative, who up until two or so hours ago had been MIA my entire life to the extent I had no idea he even existed, had the rundown on my friend’s reputation. If I got as angry about that right now as I felt, what little energy I had left would go there and not where it was truly needed—toward the people waiting for me in the house.
“Thanks. I’ll take your opinion under advisement,” I said, unable to fend off the sarcasm. That’s what exhaustion and a surfeit of surprises did to me.
“You’re angry. And that’s understandable. We have all the time in the world to talk now.” His hand landed on my upper back for a brief moment before I shrugged it off. We were way too new to one another for that kind of earned intimacy.
He pulled the door tight and engaged the lock.
A quick scan of my kitchen and living room showed two other druids who’d recently entered my life, Wes and Kaz. They were head to head at the dining table with their knives and scraps of wood spread before them. I didn’t see my sons, their cousin Sallie, or Harper’s girlfriend Leilani. Rowan was out of sight too.
“The doctor made a pot of tea,” said Christoph, his voice raspy, “and took Harper, Thatcher, and the girls upstairs.”
I turned, wanting to get a good look at the birdman standing in the nexus of my house. He didn’t look grandfather-ish, except for the
