10. Sit Down, Wolf
Chapter ten
Sit Down, Wolf
The truck came through the gate in the early afternoon.
The truck rolled up to the front of the house and stopped.
The driver-side door opened.
Dex came around the front. Grease across one cheekbone.
He swept the porch with his eyes, the way Bodie had taught all of them to sweep a porch.
Mom. Jasper. Callum standing at the screen door.
His eyes held on Callum a beat longer than the rest. Jasper let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.
The passenger door opened.
Tara Baptiste came down off the running board.
Tall. Wary. Her eyes went to Mom first, the way the eyes of women who knew good southern manners required acknowledging the woman of the house first. Then Jasper.
She didn’t smile.
He liked her immediately.
“Mrs. Voss,” she said to Mom, formal in a way that was its own respect. “I’m Tara.”
“I know who you are, sweetheart.” Mom came down a step. “Get your grandma out of that truck before she decides to do it herself.”
Tara turned.
Grandmère was already out. She stood beside the rear passenger door with her chin lifted slightly, radiating the same quiet, immovable certainty Jasper had spent his whole life watching in Rowena.
Mom went the rest of the way down the steps.
The two older women met at the foot of the steps and embraced. Grandmère reached up and rested her hand on Mom’s cheek.
They turned together and came up the steps.
***
The kitchen filled.
Jasper held the door for the procession. Grandmère. Tara. Dex. Then Mom. Eli was at his usual spot at the table. Callum had moved from the screen door to the bench at the head of the table
Miss Delphine was also at the table.
Jasper had been buying ribbons and herbs from her at Magnolia Creek festivals every year since he was old enough to fish a five out of his pocket. He had not, in all those years, seen her anywhere but behind a booth.
A leather book sat by her elbow.
Her eyes came up and found Callum across the room.
Callum nodded. He hadn’t expected her here either.
She didn’t nod back.
She just looked at him.
Eli had already stripped the table down to essentials by the time everyone came inside.
The Louisiana map remained open near his hand, along with a shortened version of Glenn’s statement and a few pages of notes. Everything else had been stacked, closed, or turned facedown.
Nobody in the room knew each other well enough yet for careless trust.
Celie Toussaint sat down beside Miss Delphine and smiled for the first time since coming through the door.
“Well,” she said, “you’re still alive.”
Miss Delphine huffed out a laugh. “Spite keeps me young.”
Rowena smiled as she moved behind them toward the cabinet. Comfortable. Familiar. Like she’d seen this exact exchange a hundred times before.
“You two want coffee before you start fighting properly?”
“Too late for that,” Miss Delphine said.
Celie reached over and squeezed her hand.
Jasper watched the whole thing quietly from the table.
His mother knew these women well. Well enough that nobody bothered performing introductions or politeness around each other anymore.
Somehow, that unsettled him more than if they had.
***
Across the table, Eli pushed his glasses higher with one knuckle and reached for the map again. His left hand shook slightly against the paper. Barely there.
Tara noticed.
Jasper saw her notice it too.
But whatever question crossed her mind never crossed her lips.
Serena was missing. Everybody in the room looked wrecked in one way or another.
The screen door opened again.
Mel stepped into the kitchen, carrying the smell of coffee beans and night air with her.
Nobody questioned why she came straight in. She crossed the kitchen and took the chair beside Rowena as if she’d sat there a hundred times before.
Maybe she had.
Jasper watched his mother pour her coffee without asking how she took it.
Something about it all was more than a little unsettling.
Yesterday, Glenn had confirmed what none of them had known how to ask before: Mel hadn’t just been a woman running a coffee shop in town. She’d known their father. Worked with him. Stayed close to Magnolia Creek because somebody wanted eyes on Thornwood.
And somehow she’d spent years watching the three of them grow up from behind a counter while they got nothing at all from the man who put her there.
Mel caught Jasper looking at her.
“You look tired,” she said simply.
Like they were talking about anything except the last twenty-four hours.
***
Dex was watching Jasper.
Not openly. The way a man measures another man across a room when he’s decided he isn’t going to be the one to break the look first.
Jasper let him.
He met Dex’s eyes and held them. Dex’s mouth moved a quarter of an inch. He looked back down at the table.
Callum, at the head, hadn’t said a word since Miss Delphine had looked at him. He was watching her watch him. Jasper knew the look on his brother’s face the way he knew the look on his own.
Why are you looking at me like that?
Miss Delphine didn’t look away.
Celie Toussaint cleared her throat.
“There’s work to do,” she said.
Mom looked at Eli.
***
Eli adjusted his glasses and pulled the Louisiana map closer, keeping the thicker stack of notes near his elbow closed.
“Marcus is somewhere south of New Orleans,” he said. “That’s as close as we have narrowed it down yet.”
He tapped the penciled circle near the coastline.
“We’ve had intermittent contact with Serena. Enough to know she’s alive.”
Tara went still at that, but didn’t interrupt.
“We also confirmed Marcus has ties to the Beaumonts,” Eli continued. “Old ones.”
That landed differently around the table.
Celie’s expression flattened slightly. Miss Delphine looked down at her folded hands. Mel went very still beside Rowena’s empty chair.
Jasper noticed all of it.
“How old?” Celie asked quietly.
“Old enough that Fillion knew the name immediately,” Eli said. “Old enough that Marcus expected it to mean something to us.”
Nobody said anything for a second after that.
The silence felt crowded.
Then Celie pushed herself up from the table with a soft exhale.
“Quarter hour,” she said. “Rowena and I need to compare warding before we decide our next step. Tara, baby, bring my box in from the truck.”
Tara nodded and stood.
Rowena followed Celie toward the back hallway without explanation.
Jasper watched them go.
His mother moved beside Celie with the ease of long familiarity. Like this wasn’t the first crisis they’d walked into together. That realization sat strangely in his chest.
Behind him, a chair scraped softly against the floor.
Dex had started to stand with Tara before she rested a hand briefly against the center of his chest.
“Sit down, wolf. I can carry a fucking box.”
Dex sat back down with the expression of a man fully aware he’d just taken an order in front of witnesses.
Jasper caught his eye first and immediately lifted his eyebrows high enough to be insulting.
Callum snorted into his coffee.
Eli managed to hold onto his concentration for all of two seconds before the corner of his mouth broke anyway.
Dex looked between the three of them and sighed through his nose.
“Not one damn word.”
Jasper leaned back in his chair, grinning now. “Didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Callum lost the fight against another laugh.
***
Tara came back with the wooden box and set it on the kitchen counter.
She stood there for a second before opening it.
A small object wrapped in dark cloth sat right on top.
Tara froze.
Slowly, she picked it up.
Her eyes closed briefly.
“You finished it,” she said quietly.
Grandmère’s voice drifted in from the back hallway.
“Yes, is no good you runnin’ around without protection.”
Tara unwrapped the cloth in her palm. A small carved bone charm strung on a length of braided red and black cord rested in the center of it. The carving was fresh enough that the cut edges hadn’t darkened yet.
“Grandmère made the original of this for me when I was eight,” she said. “I gave it to Serena right after she left him. She kept it on her at all times.”
The kitchen went still.
“Is it possible she still has it on her?” Rowena asked.
Tara shook her head. “No, Mère told me he took it from her, but she somehow made her way into Mère’s dreams without the charm.”
Her thumb closed around the new charm.
“Grandmère made this one as a replacement for me.” Tara looked over her shoulder to the den where her grandmother was busy working with Rowena. “Serena’s gonna need a new one, too, Mère.”
“Keep looking in the box, baby.”
Tara spun back around to the box and sure enough there was another soft dark cloth rolled up in the corner between a scrying bowl and an old book.
Eli’s head lifted sharply.
Tara noticed the look immediately. “What?”
Eli took his glasses off slowly.
“You’re that Tara.”
Now it was Tara staring at him.
Eli looked briefly toward his brothers before looking back at her.
“College, uh, murals… uncommissioned murals...”
Something shifted across Tara’s face. Fast enough she probably thought nobody caught it.
Jasper caught it anyway.
Eli settled his glasses back on.
“Nashville,” he said quietly. “You’re her friend from Nashville.”
Tara swallowed hard once.
“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”
Nobody in the kitchen spoke for a second after that.
Because suddenly this wasn’t just Celie Toussaint’s granddaughter standing in Rowena’s kitchen.
It was someone who loved Serena too. Someone who had known her a lot longer than the rest of them.
Grandmère reappeared in the doorway beside Rowena and took one look at Tara’s face.
“We’re going to find her,” she said.
Tara closed her hand tighter around the charm.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” Grandmère said calmly. “I do.”
Tara turned abruptly and headed for the screen door before anybody could say another word.
The door slammed behind her.
Rowena’s eyes lifted toward Dex.
Dex was already standing. He followed her out without hesitation.
***
After a while, Mom and Celie disappeared back down the hallway together.
Mom touched Celie lightly between the shoulders as they passed through the doorway. The door shut quietly behind them.
Beside Jasper, Eli was staring down at his left hand where it rested against the table. The tremor showed more when he stopped trying to hide it.
Jasper reached over and squeezed the back of his neck once.
“You’re paying for it,” he said quietly.
Eli stayed looking at the table. “Probably.”
“How bad?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Jasper waited.
Eli finally exhaled through his nose. “If I don’t find answers, Mom’ll figure it out.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Jasper said.
Miss Delphine walked back in with Mel and sat quietly beside Celie’s empty chair, watching Callum over the rim of her coffee cup.
Callum noticed eventually and looked back at her with the steady patience Jasper knew all too well.
Whatever she wanted to say, she wasn’t ready yet. If she thought Callum might budge first, she was sorely mistaken.
Then the bond shifted.
Jasper went still.
The gold thread in his chest pulled tight, hard enough to hurt.
Serena.
The feeling hit him hard and sudden — Serena reaching for them on purpose.
Beside him, Eli froze too.
Across the table, Callum’s head lifted at the exact same moment.