Chapter 25 #2
Lucien’s hand finds mine without thought, his fingers threading through with ease. Sir pads along at our heels with his tail held high, every bit the composed and silent observer he insists on presenting himself as.
We fall into step together, the path curving down toward town familiar now in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes. Nine months ago, I didn’t know these streets. Now my feet know every dip and turn.
Even my parents are showing interest in moving back, like this place is finally calling us home.
The magic hums beneath my feet as it always does, ever-present, constant and alive and woven into everything like breath. As it should be. As it always should have been.
“Morning, Keisha!” Countess Monroe calls from her porch, her voice carrying easily across her front garden, one hand raised above a row of flowering herbs.
“Good morning!” I wave back with a smile.
“Mayor Vale!” A man across the street lifts his chin in greeting, his dog dragging him forward with singular determination, the leash taut and entirely decorative at this point.
The greetings come easily, voices lifting as we pass, faces bright and open in the way of people who genuinely mean what they say. It still does something to me every single time.
Lucien inclines his head politely to each of them, the gesture unhurried and gracious, though I feel the slight shift in his hand where it holds mine.
“I don’t believe I’ll ever get used to that,” he murmurs under his breath, pitched just for me.
I glance up at him, a smile already tugging at my mouth. “Mayor Vale does have a certain ring to it,” I say.
His lips curve faintly, though there’s something wry underneath it, that particular expression he wears when he finds himself in a situation he didn’t entirely anticipate. “It was a unanimous decision,” he says, “which I find far more concerning than flattering.”
“That’s because you’re used to being right quietly,” I reply, glancing back up at him. “Now everyone just says it out loud.”
He huffs out something that qualifies as a laugh before lifting my hand and brushing a kiss across my knuckles, leisurely, like we have all the time in the world.
Everything moved quickly after Founder’s Day.
With Lenora gone, the town needed steadying, and steadying required someone who already knew Ruby Springs from the inside out.
Someone who understood its history, its people, its unwritten rules without needing a handbook or a grace period.
Someone the community already trusted without quite knowing the full depth of why.
Lucien had been the obvious choice, even if he would never in ten lifetimes have put his own name forward.
He still runs Bits and Bobs, still moves through town with that self-possessed ease he carries everywhere, but there is weight now in the way people look at him that wasn’t there before, at least not openly.
A recognition. A respect spoken plainly where before it had only been felt.
He wears it well, the way he wears most things, like it was tailored specifically for him.
We turn the corner toward the square, and the low, familiar hum of morning activity rises to meet us. Shops are open, doors propped wide to catch the air, laughter drifting between buildings, conversations bleeding together as people move about their day without particular urgency.
I hear Maceo’s laugh before I see him. That booming, full-bodied sound that carries far and wide.
He’s propped against the side of his tow truck outside Bea’s diner, exactly where he told me he would not be this morning, laughing at something the man standing across from him has just said.
My man is constitutionally incapable of passing a conversation without joining it. I have accepted this about him.
As we get closer, the other man comes fully into view, and I take a moment because, well.
I can appreciate a well-put-together man without apology, even living in a house full of them.
He’s tall and broad-shouldered, built in a way that reads as deliberate, with dark brown skin and a smile that arrives in stages before landing at full wattage.
The black uniform he’s wearing is crisp and new-looking, his badge catches the morning light with each small shift of his weight.
There’s no weapon on his hip, because this is Ruby Springs and there is never really a need for one, but it does nothing to diminish the quiet authority he carries.
He looks exactly like someone who could handle whatever the morning decided to throw at him.
Maceo says something else that earns a low, rolling laugh from the man beside him, but I notice that his attention isn’t entirely in the conversation.
No. His eyes keep drifting toward the diner window.
Through the wide pane of glass, Bea moves between tables with the easygoing efficiency she always brings to the floor, coffee pot in one hand, her black and maroon braids pinned up and her apron tied neatly at her waist. She’s talking animatedly to a table of regulars the way she always does, laughing at something one of them says, completely at ease and completely unaware of the man outside who has apparently decided she is the most interesting thing in Ruby Springs.
His gaze tracks her without interruption. There is nothing casual about it.
I take that in, file it away for later, and keep walking. That is a story with chapters I haven’t read yet, and I am going to need to be sitting down with popcorn in hand.
“That’s him,” Lucien says quietly at my side, with no further elaboration required.
Kareem Baxter.
The name had come up more than once over the past few weeks, usually from Maceo, occasionally from Ezra, always in the easy shorthand men use for someone they’ve known long enough to stop explaining.
From what I’ve gathered, he was born here, grew up in Ruby Springs before the jaguar shifters relocated south to Onyx Hollow when he was still young.
Two packs sharing the same territory long-term tends to create friction neither side wants, so the move had made sense.
He and Maceo, at least, seem to have kept whatever thread connected them intact.
The way they’re laughing right now looks like no time has passed at all.
Now he’s back, standing outside my bestie’s diner with an expression that suggests Bea is going to have some things to deal with whether she is ready for them or not.
We close the last of the distance, and Maceo glances up first, his grin immediate and entirely unrepentant.
“You said you wanted to walk,” he calls, already pushing off the truck.
“I did,” I agree, equally unapologetic. “You said you had a busy morning.”
“I do,” he says, gesturing broadly to the conversation he was just in, as if that’s end of it.
Kareem’s attention shifts then, drawn away from the window for the first time since we arrived. He turns toward us fully, and his dark brown eyes land first on me, then moves to Lucien.
Lucien releases my hand just long enough to step forward, offering his.
“Kareem.”
“Mayor Vale.” Kareem’s voice is smooth and even as he takes the handshake, his grip firm and brief. Then his eyes move to me, and his smile shifts into something warm and a little amused.
“So, you must be Keisha Thorne,” he says, meeting my eyes with quiet assurance and unmistakable warmth. “Maceo has told me quite a bit about you.”
The statement hangs in the air for a moment. Maceo’s energy shifts beside me, that particular brand of mischief that means he’s about to say something that will either make me laugh or make me want to hide behind Lucien’s perfectly pressed suit jacket.
Kareem’s smile widens just a fraction, and he glances toward Maceo with the kind of look that passes between old friends. When he turns back to me, there’s definitely amusement dancing in those dark brown eyes.
“The baddest Witch in Ruby Springs,” he says, and I can hear the quotation marks in his voice, the way he’s repeating something verbatim.
I let out a quiet breath through my nose, already seeing the whole trajectory of this unfolding in front of me.
“Yeah,” I say, shaking my head slowly, though the smile is already there. “I guess this is going to be a thing.”
They all laugh, and I can’t fight it anymore. The smile breaks through, easy and unrestrained.
The baddest Witch in Ruby Springs.
“Yeah,” I say under my breath. “That sounds about right.”
THE END.