31. Oz
Oz
I nearly choke as I watch Wild and Kohdiy stare at one another in shock.
Maybe if Kohdiy coils his entire body up beneath the table, this will be possible.
A minotaur waitress shows up then and smiles up at him.
“Hey there, hon. We’re gonna need to make a little more space for you; can you give me a second? ”
Kohdiy frowns but shifts backward with a quick nod.
It’s hard for me to focus around the plug still buried in my ass, slowly nudging against my prostate. It doesn’t vibrate but it’s the slow tease that’s driving me crazy. I resist the urge to close my eyes and moan.
The minotaur rubs the tabletop affectionately, looking up at the ceiling. “My sweet, you mind making us a little more space for this gentleman? He needs a spot to coil up his tail, if you will. I know it’s been a while.”
I’ve never seen a waitress ask any of the bars or restaurants in town to do something like this. Much less mention that it’s been done before? Where has this information been for the eight or so months I’ve lived here?!
The table shifts and lifts on its base until it hovers above our head. Beneath our feet, the floorboards flip and move just like they did at the Keeper’s house. A spot deepens, down down down, probably ten or so feet, a wood curlicue running down into the darkness.
Once it’s done shifting, the waitress pats Kohdiy on the shoulder. “There you go, love; just slot yourself into our special-made seat, and I’ll grab you a drink. Water? Mead?”
I look around the table, but everyone else looks as shell-shocked as I am, staring between the big ophiotaurii and the waitress.
“Did that just happen?” I mutter to myself.
“Water,” he says brusquely as the tabletop descends into place once again, this time slightly higher. He curls his tail down into the seat below him until he’s sitting there next to Wilder. He still towers over Wild, but at least this way he’s probably comfy.
We each order a drink, and the waitress disappears toward the bar with a sashay of her thick hips.
Next to me, Willa watches the whole exchange with a knowing smile. Kohdiy shifts in the chair, eventually placing both his big hands on the table. He’s utterly silent, sitting there as awkwardly as Wilder and me. I still don’t know what to say to the big ophiotaurii.
Hey, how come your club likes to raid the train?
What are you doing with the supplies you take?
Why don’t you ever come into town?
Why Willa?
Honestly, I’m not sure I’d get an answer even if I asked him. He’s even quieter than Wild, and that’s really saying something.
Willa slaps one of Sipan’s journals onto the tabletop with a maniacal look in her brilliant green eyes.
“I’ve been through every one of these journals over the last twenty-four hours.
Sipan was a genius, I mean like, elite-level genius.
He loved this place so much, and it loved him—we obviously knew that part.
He knew that once he was gone, that connection would be hard to replace, but he wanted someone to eventually love PG the way he did.
So he left these little clues like the one we found. ”
“We didn’t find it, though,” I murmur as I reach for the journal. “The bar gave it to us.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Willa says quietly as I take the book.
I stare at the open journal, but it’s a mass of scribbles from one side to the other. It’s impossible to make sense of it, and I look up at her. “How did you decipher this, Willa?”
She points at Kohdiy. “With a lot of help. Turns out green magic is needed to fully read Sipan’s journals.
Thankfully, Kohdiy was willing to help me since I obviously don’t possess that.
” She chuckles. “Actually, when he reads these spells, plants shoot out of the notebooks and intertwine to tell a sort of story. It’s incredibly advanced magic, like, Sipan would have had to plant seeds within these literal pages.
” She shakes her head. “I can’t fathom the talent needed to make this happen. ”
“Near depthless talent,” Kohdiy offers. “I know no one who could do this within my clan or anywhere else.”
She launches into a long explanation about her theories around the words growing up out of the book, but it’s magically technical, and I don’t follow. All I know is that even Wilder looks concerned. So perhaps this isn’t standard Willa behavior anymore.
“So…” I glance at the silent ophiotaurii next to Wild, but Kohdiy’s glittering golden eyes are focused on Willa.
The waitress returns with our drinks and sets them down with a tentative smile at Kohdiy. It fascinates me when he lifts the glass of water and pokes a forked snakelike tongue into the cup, drinking deeply.
Willa thrums her fingers over the notebook’s pages. “Apparently, what you can see of Pine Gulch isn’t all of Pine Gulch—the downtown, I mean.”
I nod. “Right, we’ve got the hidden boating tunnels below, but that’s not exactly a secret.”
One of Wilder’s brows lifts. “I’ve heard about those but haven’t had a chance to see them.”
“I’ll show you sometime,” I say with a sexy wink. I shift in the seat and the plug nudges deeper.
My turn for sexy shenanigans in a cutesy little boat like Mister Darcy!
“Not those,” Willa says, grabbing the journal and flipping to a page. When I look down at the scribbled markings, I still can’t read it.
“We didn’t decipher all of it yesterday because we ran out of time, but it sounds like there’s some kind of town meeting place, a fountain, an actual key to the city, and a couple other things we didn’t get to.”
I turn in my seat to stare at her. “And where’s this stuff been all these years? Why doesn’t anyone remember it?”
Willa looks at me, her expression curious. “Don’t they? Or does nobody know to ask? I guarantee if you cornered any of the first-gen monsters and asked them point-blank, they wouldn’t be surprised at all.”
“Or Betty,” I muse as I consider the sassy troll who owns Betty’s Burger Bar. Betty’s a PG original, a Gulcher through and through, and old as the hills, not that it’s slowed her down.
Willa nudges me. “This actually concerns you two.” She waves a hand at Wilder. “Because from what I can tell, the key to unlocking all of this and revealing what’s been hidden is located somewhere on the Sandoval ranch.”
I whip around in my seat at the same time Wild barks out a stream of questions.
Willa laughs and lifts both hands in the air. “Okay, boys, one at a time. I literally didn’t get any of that.”
Wild leans onto his forearms, brows set with tension as he stares at his sister. “Why do you think it’s there? And why would it be?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know why it’d be there, or if the Sandovals are even aware.
But I have to assume PG herself knows, and that’s why she tossed us the clue.
It would make sense, really, since I’m handling the purchase of the ranch for you.
There are coordinates, and assuming the survey results we got are correct, the key is somewhere in the vicinity of the river that runs partially through the ranch, up in the foothills.
” She glances at Kohdiy. “He agrees with me because—”
“Enough,” Kohdiy says quietly. “No more, Willa.”
Wild and I look between them, and it shocks the hells out of me when Willa doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Anyway,” she says as she looks at her brother, “it’s my opinion that we got dragged into this because the key lies on the ranch you’re buying, and Pine Gulch is ready for a new era.
I mean…that’s what I’m surmising.” She smiles at Wild.
“My only real question for you is should we talk to Emmer Sandoval and his father about this or just let it lie?”
“Oh gods, yeah,” I murmur as I consider the ramifications of that. Looking across the table, I find Wild running both hands through his hair, eyes skyward like he’s mulling the whole thing over.
A moment passes, and then he looks at me, popping his lips. “What do you think we should do, Oz?”
My mouth drops open. I look at him in utter shock. Is he really asking what we should do like I’m a part of this deal? Unbidden, tears fill my eyes. Less than a day into a real relationship and he’s asking me about something important.
While I have an ass plug in my butt.
Ginger appears out of nowhere and hops onto the bench seat next to me, licking the side of my neck. Beneath the table, Willa places a hand on my knee, squeezing me slightly.
A moment passes where no one says anything, even though everyone is staring at me. Brushing a tear away, I sniffle and lift my chin. I’m a male of many opinions, and I can have an opinion about this.
“Well,” I start, “if this is true, it could change the deal, right? If they find out they might not want to sell anymore if there’s a hidden component to the property.
This might renew Emmer’s interest in his father’s estate, assuming he has interest in it.
But then also, if you find out there’s more detail, you’re probably legally obligated to disclose it just like with the survey results. ”
We fall silent, all seemingly lost in thought.
Wild looks at me, biting at his lower lip, which draws attention to the deep dimples on either side of that sexy mouth.
“Why does shit keep popping up with this deal?” he murmurs. “One thing after another, it seems.”
I snort. “First me and now all the rest of this nonsense!”
He shakes his head with a big frown. “I don’t mean you, Oz.”
“Things worth having are often hard to get,” Kohdiy says. We all look up at him, and he shrugs. “In my experience, anything I ever really wanted was difficult to obtain. It is the way of our world sometimes.”
The bench seat beneath him creaks and rattles, and he slowly glances down. Moments later, he looks up. “Seems she agrees,” he says drolly.
“I want to find the key,” Willa states, grabbing Sipan’s journal and slipping it in a bag on the bench next to her.
“The literal key seems to be imperative in unlocking the first step of whatever Sipan had planned. I met with Shadow this morning, and while what she’s seen so far is cool, it’s barely scratching the surface of Sipan’s real plans. ”
She looks at Wild. “I’m giving you and Oz ‘til tomorrow to bask in your newlywed vibes, and then Kohdiy and I will have gone through most of the journals. We’ll have a plan of attack.”
Kohdiy shifts on the seat, his features deepening into a frown as the gold ring in his nose shifts.
“Not attack,” Willa emphasizes. “A path forward. Sorry, I forgot.” She looks at me. “Language is important.”
“Mmm,” Kohdiy mumbles over the table.
Wild looks up at him.
Willa chuckles. “Never thought I’d have two of you stoics in my life.” She elbows me in the side, waggling both dark green brows. “Guess you and I are just gonna have to liven up these males, am I right? They didn’t know what they were missing until they met us.”
Glancing over the table at a concerned-looking Wild and Kohdiy, I bark out a laugh. They wear matching concerned expressions, brows bunched and nostrils flared. They’re even both sitting with their arms crossed.
“That’s right, sister,” I say to Willa. “That’s right.”