The man threw his head back and laughed heartily.
“I like you,” he grinned. “Devlin Stratton, you say?” I nodded my head. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. How do you know him?”
“He was a friend of mine.”
I closed my lips tightly, not wanting to tell him anything else about it.
He turned his head to the side and took a big whiff of the air. Xander and I both stiffened on our stools and the big man put his hands on the counter in front of us and leaned forward.
“You look an awful lot like Devlin, but you don’t smell like a caster, so you can’t be related to him. I can’t figure it out. Him?” He pointed toward Xan with his head. “I know he’s a big, bad dragon shifter, but you? I don’t know, and that troubles me. You say you know Devlin. I need a little more proof before I take you to see Di.”
Xan growled, stood up, and mirrored the man’s posture by leaning over the counter toward him.
“She told you she knows him,” Xan said between clenched teeth.
The guy stood up and backed himself against the far wall, crossing his arms across his massive chest and shrugged.
“I need to know for a fact you two are friends and not foes.”
Who was this Di person that she needed her own security? What did Dev get us into? I broke eye contact with the man and looked toward Xan. I sighed, defeated because I knew what I needed to do. When Xan caught on, he shook his head sternly.
“Don’t. We don’t know if we can trust them,” he quietly told me.
“Honey, we don’t have a choice. Dev sent us here and I know he wouldn’t steer us wrong. You know it too.”
Without taking my eyes off of Xander, I turned my left hand up and waited for my spellbook to appear in it. I set it on the counter in front of me and began flipping through the pages. I knew that to the man, the pages would look completely blank because only casters from my family line could see the spells, but he should know a spellbook when he saw one.
“So you are a caster,” the man said and took a step toward me, looking down onto the pages of the book.
“Yup,” I told him. I found the page I was looking for and memorized the spell I needed. I closed the book before sending it away, back to my backpack in the trunk of our stolen car. I stood up and leaned over the counter, indicating for the man to lean forward so I could whisper in his ear. “Mento menilla,” I whispered, and sat back in my seat.
He backed up and looked at me with wide eyes. “What did you do?” he asked, his jaw slack.
“I gave you the ability to see what I truly am, but only for a little while,” I replied.
He squinted and shook his head, but then leaned forward again to look a little closer.
“Is, is that your aura?” he asked.
I nodded my head. The spell spoken aloud gave the person hearing it the ability to see people as they were, without any pretenses. You could not only see what kind of person they were, but if they were a supernatural, you could see the breed in the aura surrounding them. It was a temporary spell, but effective for what I needed. I was thankful to come across it in Dev’s spellbook.
The man looked from me to Xander to the other supernaturals in the diner, then back to me.
“That’s impossible,” he muttered to himself. “You’re a…”
“Keep it to yourself,” Xan gritted through his teeth.
The man blinked and wiped his hand across his face, then nodded his head in agreement.
“Yeah, okay.” He rounded the counter and walked toward us, taking a deep, calming breath. “Di will definitely want to meet you,” he told me. Xan put his hand on my waist, staking his claim.
“So, she can help?” I asked, trying to ignore Xan’s closeness. We needed some answers.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I know for a fact that she can.”
He still didn’t give off a murderer vibe, but his smile made me nervous. I could tell I wasn’t the only one to feel that way either by the way Xan’s hand tightened around mine.
The man must have picked up on our cautiousness. He turned toward the others in the restaurant and nodded for them to leave. One by one, they left their drinks and food on their tables and filed out the front door and down the street so the three of us were the only ones left in the diner.
“My name is Grayson,” he said and held out his hand for Xander to take.
Xan hesitated, but then took his hand and shook it. Grayson released Xan and held it out for me to shake. After he shook my hand, he dropped it and continued.
“Look, I know you have no reason to trust me, but I also know Di can help. It’s what she does. So now you two have a choice. You can take a leap of faith and follow me out of here and I can take you to my boss, who has the abilities and the means to help, or you can get in your car and leave, but you’ll never have the answers you’re looking for. It’s up to you.”
I looked up at Xander, trying to see what he was thinking.
“Lead the way,” my mate told Grayson and moved aside so he could pass by us toward the door.
“Nah. We’ll go out the back,” Grayson told him and turned on his heels. “Ya know, I told you my name. It’s only polite you tell me yours.”
“Emelia,” I replied as we followed him through the kitchen and out the back door. “And this is
