Chapter Four
A Meeting in the Woods
The voice reverberated through Nora’s insides, jolting her to her feet. She and Henry rose as one, facing the large newcomer, and she braced herself; her mind worked rapidly to come up with a defensive spell, but could only come up with the same three words: I’m done for.
The figure took a step into the tent.
Only then did she realize it wasn’t the hunter.
The man was a lot bulkier. Not to mention he was bald.
He looked like he was in his late forties, his shirt pulled tightly against his beer gut, a dyed handlebar mustache adorning his face.
Dark shades rested on his nose, his eyes peering over the rims at Nora and the dragon shifter.
“There you are,” he said, his deep voice filling the tent. He had a harassed look on his face. “My kid’s been asking about the animal shelter. She won’t stop talking about it. So I brought her here.”
Henry and Nora exchanged a glance. Then Henry faced the man.
“I think you mean animal sanctuary,” he said, picking up a flyer. “Here at Green Animal Rescue Sanctuary, we—”
“Yeah, whatever you say, pal. Look, she just wants to pet the animals.” He pulled a wallet from his pocket and slapped a couple of crumpled notes on the table before Henry could say anything else. “Think that’ll cover it?”
“Bunny!” cried a child’s voice from outside.
All three of them stepped outside the tent. Sure enough, a little girl stood pointing at one of the rabbits in the petting crates. With a grin too wide for her little face, she approached the crate, giggling as she stroked the rabbit’s fur.
“She’s so cute!” she gushed. “I love her.”
“Actually, that’s a he, kiddo,” Henry corrected with a kind smile. “But look—I think he likes you, too.”
The girl’s grin only widened. Nora watched her pet the rabbit, unsure why the sight made her feel so good inside.
Perhaps it was the pure innocence of the child, unaware of the reality of the world she lived in, caring about nothing but the rabbit before her.
Or perhaps it was the way Henry spoke to her.
There was something about him, an air of safety that seemed to radiate off him.
She’d felt it earlier, back at the sanctuary when he saved her from almost certain death.
And now, even with the threat of the hunter still looming in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of calm as she watched him.
She decided it was a bit weird simply standing and watching, so she decided to make herself useful. Thinking quickly, she reached for one of the boxes of T-shirts and pulled out one of the pink ones with the cartoonish rabbit in front. She held it out before the girl.
“What do you think?” she asked her.
The girl’s eyes looked like they might pop right out of their sockets.
“Bunny!” she cried again, pointing at the top. She rushed over to her father, tugging determinedly on his arm. “Daddy, can I have that T-shirt, please?”
The man gave a tired sigh. “Look, Mandy—”
“Pretty please, with a cherry on top?” She shot him a puppy-eyed look. “I just want the T-shirt.”
The man looked at the T-shirt, then at Henry, and then at his daughter. Then he reached for his wallet again.
A minute later, he and his daughter were gone, the little girl already wearing the pink top and clutching a flyer. Nora turned to find Henry staring at her, a curious look on his face.
“See?” she said with a smile. “Branding. We just might get you your five grand before the day ends.”
Henry didn’t return the grin. His brows furrowed slightly. “You look shaken.”
It took her a moment to realize that he was right. Between watching the kid pet the rabbit and handing her the T-shirt, she hadn’t realized it, but her heart seemed to be bouncing around in her ribcage like a pachinko ball. She drew a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
“You thought that was the hunter, didn’t you?”
She nodded. In that split second before she’d realized it was just another customer, she’d been frozen in terror. She sucked in another breath. Of course it wasn’t the hunter. He couldn’t have found me already. I left him all the way in Texas. He was fast, but he couldn’t be that fast.
Could he?
Around them, the fair continued to unfold, people milling about in excitement or exhaustion, but she had eyes only for Henry.
His dark, intense gaze lingered on her, and for a moment she wondered what was going through his mind.
No doubt, he was thinking about the hunter, or the fact that she was a hybrid.
Nora bit the inside of her mouth. Had she made a mistake telling him what she was?
What were the odds he wouldn’t turn on her?
If he did, he wouldn’t be the first.
***
“It’s happening on the Fourth,” Isobel was saying.
Nora stared across the clearing at the coven leader, unsure what she meant by that.
She swept her gaze around at the other witches in the circle, none of whom seemed to share her confusion.
Of course. Served her right for showing up late to the meeting.
In her defense, the meeting had been somewhat impromptu, and she’d been working a late night at the eatery today.
It was almost midnight. She and nine other witches stood in a large clearing, dressed in silver robes. The rest of the woods were dead silent but for the occasional rustle of leaves as animals scampered around. Overhead, the moon gleamed brightly, almost a full sphere of light in the night sky.
“I want us all to be present,” Isobel went on.
The coven leader’s silvery hair matched her robes, both seeming to gleam in the moonlight.
Tall and regal, she stood out easily among the rest of the coven members, looking barely in her fifties despite being decades older.
“This is very crucial to the Circle of Moonshade.”
“What is?” It took Nora a second to realize she’d spoken.
Several heads turned in her direction, most of them disapproving, and she immediately wanted to sink into the ground. As a hybrid, among these witches, she’d already drawn enough attention and disgust toward herself. The last thing she needed was more of it.
Isobel’s lip curled slightly. “If you’d shown up to this meeting on time, you wouldn’t need me to repeat myself, Alianora. But I will. The reason I called for a meeting tonight, on the First of July, is because the Fourth approaches. In three days, something important is happening.”
“Independence Day?”
Nora knew the second the words were out of her mouth that she’d said a stupid thing. A few snickers rippled around the circle of witches, and Isobel’s eyes narrowed.
“A full moon.”
“Oh.”
The coven leader kept her gaze on her for the next few seconds, and Nora felt a chill travel down her spine.
For as long as she could recall, Isobel had never liked her, on account of her being a hybrid.
But these days...these days, the witch’s eyes had a burning hatred in them.
Nora couldn’t help wondering whether it had something to do with the fact that she’d broken up with Isobel’s son a month ago.
In all honesty, she wasn’t sure why she’d dated Jeff for so long.
He’d been nothing but a jerk to her in the three years they’d been together.
Not to mention he was a loser who lived in Isobel’s shadow.
Why had she even dated him at all? To get on Isobel’s good side?
The coven leader hadn’t even approved of their relationship.
And now that she’d ended things...well, she’d just made matters worse for herself.
“Our full attendance on the Fourth is crucial,” Isobel went on. “The full moon is an opportunity to augment our individual and collective magic. A ritual will take place, and we all must be present.”
She fixed Nora with a strange stare on the last note. Nora pressed her lips together, saying nothing.
“Are there any risks we should know about?” another coven member asked, echoing her thoughts. “What if the spell goes wrong?”
Isobel frowned for a moment, her gray eyes narrowing again.
“That is possible. It’s a dangerous spell.
And the risk is the highest possible: death.
” As gasps spread across the clearing, she added, “However, I doubt it will even occur, as long as everyone does their part. Now, does anyone else have questions?”
By the time the meeting ended, a little over ten minutes later, Nora was relieved.
The coven dispersed, everyone moving back through the woods to get to their homes.
Nora trudged alone, following the dark path she’d taken here.
Before she could make it out of the woods, however, a dark shape fluttered in the corner of her vision.
The next thing she knew, a force had knocked her backward, slamming her into the nearest tree.
“What the—?” She glanced around, peering through the darkness for a sign of her attacker, and laid eyes on a silver-haired woman in silver robes. “Isobel.”
The coven leader was suddenly right in front of her, her gray eyes completely devoid of any warmth. Nora felt her insides slowly turn to ice.
“When will you stop being a problem for me?” the older witch said. “Just when, Alianora?”
“Isobel, I—”
“From the moment your mother made the decision to mate with that wolf shifter and birth you, an imbalance has struck this coven. Even worse, you’ve taken her place.
We—I—have been graceful enough to allow you to continue to gather with us, to be one of us, despite my better judgment.
I’ve allowed a...a...someone like you to exist among us. And how do you repay my kindness?”
Nora simply stared into those gray eyes, certain that whatever she said would only make things worse for herself.
“You hurt my son, Alianora,” she said. “I knew you were bad for him, right from the start. I knew that nothing good could possibly come out of the pair of you dating. And now you’ve hurt him. You broke him.”
Of course Jeff had found a way to spin the details of the breakup and make her out to be some kind of villain, as if he wasn’t the reason she’d had to end things between them. “I just broke up with him because I caught him cheating on—”
“Silence!” The trees around them seemed to bend closer, silhouetted by the moonlight. The air turned colder, the woods darker, and she immediately rubbed her arms. “My son is important to me. And you hurt him. There will be consequences. Keep this in mind, Alianora.”
And without another word, without so much as a goodnight, she turned and left, disappearing into the shadows.
***
“Look, Mom—it’s a Giganotosaurus!”
The memory dissolved into nothingness almost as suddenly as it had filled her mind.
Nora blinked. She and Henry were still standing outside the tent.
She turned her head toward the sound of the voice.
A little boy and his mother stood a few feet away, the kid bouncing excitedly on the spot while the woman watched on, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else but at the fair today.
“Yes, Charlie,” the woman muttered drily. “I see the dinosaur.”
The kid stared, wide-eyed, at one of the T-shirts on the nearest table. Looking at him, Nora saw that the long-sleeved shirt he had on featured a dinosaur as well.
“What kind is that?” she asked him, pointing at his shirt.
He pushed his glasses up his nose, flashing her a grin that revealed a missing tooth. “It’s a Tyrannosaurus rex. It looks similar to the Giganotosaurus, but they’re different. Look—the T. rex only has two digits on each forelimb. The Giganotosaurus has three.”
His smile widened, like he was proud of himself for knowing that fact. His mother shot Nora an embarrassed look, as if to say, I’m sorry, he does this all the time. She immediately pulled out a purse.
“We’ll get two of these dinosaur T-shirts,” she said, tucking her auburn hair behind her ear.
A minute later, mother and son were heading away, the kid spouting yet another dinosaur fact.
“He’s adorable,” Nora muttered, grinning to herself. Turning to Henry, she said, “See? I told you I could help. Knowing your customer will take you a long way.”
He rolled his eyes, but she caught a slight twitch of his lips. “Well, we’re still a long way from five grand. So far, we’ve only made a little over a hundred bucks.”
“Looks to me like more progress than you could’ve made with those boring green tees,” she countered. “Be patient. I’m sure more people will come. We’ll make enough sales to get you that five grand.”
This time, he did smile, and for some reason, she felt her heart flutter lightly in her chest, her insides warming up.
They stood only a couple of feet apart, but it was close enough to ignite her from within.
His T-shirt hugged his torso, accentuating his biceps and chest. Through the front of his shirt, she thought she could see his abs.
Nora’s breathing quickened a little, and for a moment she wondered whether he would object to her redesigning his T-shirt with her magic—preferably with a topless image of him reclining right above the words: FREE KISSES.
Yeah, like that definitely wouldn’t backfire. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone else ogling Henry, but she wasn’t foolish enough to assume she was the only woman around attracted to this man.
Before she could dwell on that thought, he pointed. “You might be right, after all. Looks like we’ve got another customer.”
She followed his gaze, staring at a figure approaching the tent. And her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
He was more than thirty feet away, but she recognized him instantly.
His clothes looked like something out of medieval times: a dark-green tunic over trousers and brown boots, a belt secured around his middle.
He had a large, dark-green hood pulled low over his head, blond hair peeking out from underneath.
The figure strode through the crowd, brushing past the townsfolk as he drew nearer. A couple of people frowned at his getup, but most didn’t pay him much notice. Looking at him, Nora felt her mouth go dry.
“No,” she breathed.
In her periphery, she thought she saw Henry move. “What’s wrong?”
“That...that’s not a customer,” Nora said. “That’s the hunter.”