Chapter 22 Coffee and Bait
COFFEE AND BAIT
We were halfway down the street when Samuel’s phone rang. He hit the hands-free as he pulled away from the curb.
Didi’s voice filled the car, clipped and taut.
“I got the results back from my contact. The scrying expert I asked to examine the Ashgrove coven’s magical signatures remotely.”
“And?” Samuel said.
“Their signatures are being smothered. Something’s layered on top of them. My contact nearly had a panic attack when she realized what she was looking at.”
My alpha and I exchanged a worried glance as we waited for the witch to continue.
“It’s subjugation magic, Samuel.” Didi’s voice hardened. “The kind that was banned by the covens centuries ago.”
My belly clenched. Samuel’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“The Black Chalice Rite,” I mumbled. “Arthur mentioned subjugation being one of the abilities it confers on its user.”
“I think you’ll find the same thing if you have your friend scry Melody Flowers’s magic signature,” Samuel told Didi grimly.
We gave her a breakdown of what we’d learned from the fae-witch and the magic we’d sensed in her home.
“I’ll keep chasing my contacts about the Ashgrove witches,” Didi said flatly. She hung up.
I stared distractedly out the windshield. The truth behind the Lincoln sisters’ disappearance was turning out to be uglier than any of us expected. And its ramifications went far beyond Amberford it seemed.
The mate bond pulsed with Samuel’s restlessness.
“We need to find out who’s behind that Delaware company.”
I frowned. Something told me the Thornwicks were key to all of this.
My phone buzzed before I could voice that thought. It was a text from Ellie.
Don’t forget we’re supposed to catch up over coffee today. Virgil made scones.
Guilt prickled my throat. I’d totally forgotten about our coffee date.
“I told Ellie I’d pop by Bean Me Up. She’ll be offended if I don't show my face.” I looked at Samuel. “It’s only ten minutes away.”
He grimaced.
“Fine,” he finally muttered. “But I’m not drinking anything with the word ‘moon’ in it.”
Bo perked up in the back seat. “Great. All this angst was making me hungry.”
We soon pulled up outside Bean Me Up. The chalkboard sign read Now Serving: Blood Orange Scones (No Actual Blood). Underneath, in smaller letters, somebody had added (Probably).
“I’m already regretting this,” Samuel said.
I could smell the usual miscellaneous supernatural clientele inside as we headed for the door, Bo’s tail wagging so fast it blurred.
Ellie spotted us and lit up like a Christmas tree where she was clearing a table.
“You made it.” She waved with her usual energy as she came over and knocked a ghoul’s brain muffin to the floor. “Oh. I’m so sorry! I’ll get you a replacement.”
Penny, the witch barista, released a long-suffering sigh behind the counter. Her gaze lowered to Bo, who’d parked himself in front of the cake display and was eyeing everything with sparkling eyes.
“You want a muffin?” the witch asked.
“Half a muffin,” I said sharply before my dog could acquiesce.
Penny arched an eyebrow.
Bo’s ears drooped. “I’m on a diet,” he told the puzzled witch glumly. “It’s terrible.”
“Yeah, well, at least you don’t have to try and squeeze into a summer bikini in a few months,” Penny muttered.
Samuel’s expression indicated he wanted to scrub his ears clean after hearing this. Virgil appeared from the back, took one look at him, and went pale. Or paler, which was an achievement for a vampire.
I still hadn’t figured out why he was so intimidated by the Hawthorne alpha.
“Oh, hey,” Virgil said awkwardly. He swallowed and straightened his 100% Ethically Sourced Blood T-shirt. “Can I get you something? We have a new Moonshine—”
“Coffee,” Samuel said flatly. “Cream. Four sugars.”
“Right.” Virgil retreated to the gleaming drinks machine with the urgency of a vampire who’d just remembered he had somewhere else to be.
Ellie hugged me hard enough to crack a rib.
“You look a bit stressed,” she said, pulling back to examine me with a slight frown. She brightened. “Want me to make you your favorite drink to go with that scone?”
Penny visibly tensed. Virgil’s shoulders knotted.
It seemed Ellie’s barista apprenticeship was an ongoing, uphill battle.
“How about you have that break and we catch up instead?” I suggested diplomatically.
Penny and Virgil approved the idea hastily.
We took a seat by a corner table, Samuel looking as comfortable as a wolf in a china shop in his surroundings. Having inhaled his half-muffin, Bo wasted no time in making friends with a brownie at a nearby table who was eating a slice of cake roughly the size of the Husky’s head.
I gave my dog a hard look.
“I’m just being sociable,” he said without breaking eye contact with the cake.
The brownie waved at us. It was one of the Hendersons from my old apartment building.
Ellie peppered me with questions about the mansion, Pearl, and whether I was coping with my new luna duties. Virgil delivered our coffees and scones with the careful precision of a man trying not to spill anything in front of an alpha werewolf, then hovered nervously near the counter.
“I should visit the Alliance one of these days,” my best friend observed animatedly halfway through her drink.
Samuel lowered his brows. “It’s not a social club.”
“They could do with some lightening up,” Ellie said, blatantly ignoring this. She beamed. “Maybe I should bring some cake. Everybody likes cake.”
“Wendall has an egg allergy,” Samuel grunted not too unkindly.
I swallowed a smile as I felt some of his tension fade.
Ellie had that effect on people.
For a moment, I forgot about the case. Ellie told us about the new menu items she was experimenting with, a customer who’d tried to pay in enchanted coins, and Virgil’s attempt to introduce a loyalty card program, which had ended up being sabotaged by a pixie with a hole punch.
I was mid-sip and gradually mellowing when Ellie’s chatter cut off suddenly. Her head turned toward the front window, her nostrils flaring.
I stared. “Ellie?”
I was distracted by Bo returning from where he’d been investigating the room for unattended plates. The Husky’s tail was down.
“It’s back,” my dog huffed nervously. “That black cat.”
I straightened and followed his gaze, my pulse quickening.
Across the street, sitting on a low wall beside a mailbox, was the black cat we’d spotted in the parking lot the other day. It was perfectly still and watching the coffee shop.
Ice flooded my veins.
“That cat.” Ellie’s voice had dropped. “It smells like a vampire.”
My wolf slammed to attention so hard it physically hurt.
Samuel caught my reaction through the bond before I opened my mouth. His chair scraped back.
“Stay here,” I told Ellie urgently.
I was already moving. The bell above the door jangled as I burst onto the sidewalk. Samuel was a step behind me, his wolf bleeding through in the set of his jaw and the predatory speed of his stride. Bo followed us, his ears pinned flat.
The cat’s golden eyes locked with mine for a frozen heartbeat.
Then it bolted.
It was fast. Unnaturally so. It streaked off the wall and down the sidewalk, weaving between pedestrians who didn’t even glance down. Samuel broke into a run. I matched his pace, Bo sprinting at my heels.
The cat cut left down an alley between a bookshop and a dry cleaner. We followed.
It was already at the far end, a dark streak against the sunlit street beyond. It squeezed through a gap in a chain-link fence that was barely wide enough for a rat.
Samuel hit the fence a second later and vaulted it in one fluid motion. I scrambled over after him less gracefully, my body clumsy under the effect of the white wolf powers surging through my blood. Bo found a gap lower down and wriggled through.
The alley opened onto a side street lined with dumpsters and fire escapes.
It was empty.
We stood there, breathing hard, the sun shining down on us. Samuel and I scanned the rooftops, the doorways, the shadows between buildings.
The cat was gone.
All that was left was a lingering oily trace that soon faded in the wind.