Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Elise’s parents had been gone for three days, which meant life was finally starting to return to normal around the coven.
Elise looked like she had seen sunshine for the first time in a decade, and she was standing about three inches taller than normal.
Delainey had seen the effect that Elise’s parents had on her, but it was almost shocking—the difference now that they were gone.
What she was not going to do was think about the insanity from last night.
She had finally stolen her night away, and then a fucking werewolf—Reece of the Southern Basin pack—had to show up and show her up and then dance with her like that, like there was actually something going on between them.
And that kiss… Nope, hadn’t happened.
Clearly she had hallucinated everything after Reece cut in on the dance floor and held her tight like she was everything he could want in a woman, because there was no way that man had dragged her out into an alley and kissed her like he needed her more than he needed air.
That was a hallucination. Temporary insanity. Anything except reality, really. She pressed her fingertips to her bottom lip before she caught herself and dropped her hand.
And Delainey couldn’t tell a damn person about it.
She was pretty sure Serena would never let her live it down.
Yeah, Serena had been playing nice at the housewarming party that Nico and Elise had thrown, but that didn’t mean she was about to start making out with werewolves or approving of any more relationships with them—not that Delainey was even thinking about a relationship with Reece, because that would be insane.
She wasn’t insane. Except temporarily.
Elise could hook up with a werewolf to get her rocks off, but they were still dealing with the fallout from that one relationship.
Delainey didn’t want to add to the problem because she didn’t want a werewolf boyfriend, and she wasn’t attracted to Reece, except maybe possibly sort of in a chemical sense, and all she had to do was stay away from him.
She didn’t have parents like Elise who were going to rush into town and try to drag her back and ruin her life. Her parents were nice and fine and they lived three thousand miles away. They trusted her to live her own life and make her own choices.
It was way too early in the morning for her head to be roiling this much.
Delainey glanced at the clock on her bedside table and groaned.
Ten thirty-seven. Pale morning light leaked through the gap in her curtains and fell in a narrow stripe across the rumpled quilt and over the clutter on her nightstand—a half-empty water glass, her phone facedown, a tube of hand cream with the cap off.
She buried her face in the pillow for three more minutes before she forced herself to roll out of bed and get ready for the day.
The best thing about online freelance work was that she kept her own hours, and no one cared if their web designer wasn’t available on the dot at nine a.m.—or if they did care, they could pay her more for that kind of availability.
There wasn’t really such a thing as a web design emergency, and she liked it that way.
A while later she headed down to the kitchen in search of coffee, just in time to hear a knock at the front door. Delainey froze—images of Elise’s parents coming back like they had any right—and braced herself for whatever was about to come.
Briana’s squeal of excitement was unexpected.
Delainey padded down the hallway, not caring one bit that she was still wearing her pajamas, and her eyes widened when she saw who was standing there. The hallway was narrow enough that her shoulder nearly brushed the wainscoting, and the hardwood was cold under her bare feet.
This was who Briana was so happy to see?
Ah, great. Maybe they should get Elise’s parents to come back.
“Emerson!” Briana exclaimed. She had the front door pulled wide open, one hand still on the brass knob, her strawberry-blonde braids pinned in a loose crown that was already coming undone at the temples.
“What are you doing here? You should have called first.” It wasn’t exactly an admonishment, just a surprise.
Emerson Carter was a witch from the Wallace Grove Coven, which already put Delainey on high alert. Even worse, he was Briana’s ex, and he had been quite the dick there at the end.
He was handsome in a clean-cut way—short, cropped dark blonde hair, crinkling green eyes rimmed by wire glasses, a pointy nose, and a mouth that was a bit pinched.
He had the kind of looks that should have screamed “surfer,” but he was always far too pale for that and looked more like the academic he was.
He stood on the welcome mat in a pressed button-down tucked into chinos, a canvas overnight bag slung over one shoulder and a smaller tote in his opposite hand, his posture straight and easy, like a man who had never once been turned away from a door.
He was another healer for Wallace Grove, though he focused on diseases of the mind rather than the physical ailments that Elise and her parents tended to specialize in.
And he was smiling at Briana like he hadn’t broken her heart.
But Briana was smiling back, so maybe the two of them had mended fences at some point.
Briana hadn’t mentioned it. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have.
Delainey and Serena had been the ones she had cried to when things got really bad, and she had had to beg them, practically on hands and knees, to keep them from doing harm to the man.
Serena came down the back stairs with her sweater hanging off one shoulder, a book bag slung over the opposite, and her hair gripped in one hand with a hair tie clutched between her teeth.
Morning rush mode.
Well, nearly afternoon rush mode. Serena was an adjunct at Hobson University, which luckily was about four blocks away, because Delainey was almost certain that Serena had a class at eleven a.m. and less than ten minutes to get there.
Her sneakers were untied, the laces slapping the steps as she descended two at a time.
Serena shot her a questioning look.
“Emerson,” Delainey whispered.
Serena’s eyes got wide. “What the fuck?” she whispered. She glanced at the back door and her waiting car, then back at Delainey. “Should I stay?” She had stopped mid-step, one hand braced against the kitchen doorframe, the hair tie now twisted around two fingers.
Delainey shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t think he’ll bite. You can sneak out before he sees you.”
Serena still looked torn, but then her smartwatch beeped at her and she made an angry face and hurried out the back door in a desperate rush to get to class on time.
The screen door banged shut behind her, and through the kitchen window Delainey saw her jog across the gravel to her car, still tying her hair back with one hand as she went.
Not a minute later, Elise came down the stairs and cocked her head, listening to the voices in the hallway. Aya must have been at work, or she would have joined in on the excitement.
With her parents gone, Elise had stayed at the coven for the last two nights, probably reinforcing that this was her home and that she had not officially moved in with her boyfriend.
Delainey hadn’t mentioned the sage she had seen Elise waving around, trying to cleanse the place of the bad vibes that her parents had left behind. She couldn’t blame her. She had been waving a bit of sage of her own.
“What’s going on?” Elise asked. “Who’s here?” She stood at the foot of the stairs in an oversized hoodie that hung past her wrists. She looked worried, but not too worried—she must have realized that whoever was at the front door, it couldn’t be her parents.
Delainey didn’t think they would be coming back anytime soon after the disaster that was their dinner together.
“Elise,” a male voice called from the front hallway. “Is that who I hear?”
Elise’s eyes went wide, and a smile bloomed over her face. “Emerson?” She rushed past Delainey and joined Briana in the front entrance.
Delainey reluctantly trailed after them.
Emerson had made it fully inside the house and put his stuff down. His overnight bag sat against the baseboard beneath the row of coat hooks, and the smaller tote was open at his feet, the tops of tissue-wrapped objects visible inside. He was already pulling something out of it.
Bracelets with charms on them. Hospitality gifts.
Oh fuck.
“I’m sorry it’s last minute,” Emerson said.
He held the bracelets fanned out across his open palm like a hand of cards, each one a thin braided cord with a small glass bead at the clasp.
“Some funding opened up at the university and I couldn’t say no to the opportunity to come and do a little bit of work here.
I totally understand if you don’t have the space or something, but I wanted to come and say hi either way.
” He held out a bracelet toward Briana. “It’s just a charm for mental clarity—and it should help with your headaches,” he mentioned.
“I’ve been working on some research in that area.
I think I might have a treatment for migraines in a year or two. ”
Briana took the charm and slid it on her wrist. “Of course we have space for you,” she said, turning the bracelet once so the bead sat against the inside of her wrist.
Why she offered this without checking in with the rest of the coven was a mystery to Delainey.
Did Briana not remember how things ended with Emerson? Did she think this was Emerson’s nice twin or something?
Had Briana forgotten that they had just evicted some unwanted guests from the Wallace Grove coven and had no reason to involve someone else from that coven in their business?
“Let’s get some coffee,” Briana said. “Come on.” She led all of them down the hall to the kitchen, and Emerson handed charms to both Delainey and Elise, then offered two more to Briana, asking her to give them to the rest of the coven with his compliments.
Delainey tried to bite back her scowl.
Just because Emerson was from Wallace Grove didn’t mean he was evil, she tried to tell herself as she jabbed the bracelet into the pocket of her pajama pants.
Elise’s parents could suck without implicating the hundreds of other people in their coven.
That was how life normally worked, and she wasn’t even sure that Emerson had much of a relationship with the Nevins.
She couldn’t remember from back when he had been dating Briana—but then again, Elise hadn’t yet joined their coven back then, so why would she know that?
But the timing of this was suspect.
They had just kicked Elise’s parents out of the house, and now a completely different Wallace Grove coven member was on their doorstep asking for hospitality.
Elise and Briana were talking to him like he was an old friend.
Delainey just held on to her coffee mug for dear life and tried to count down the seconds before she could make up some sort of definitely real freelance website emergency and escape back to her room.
The kitchen was warm and bright from the late-morning sun pouring through the window over the sink, and the fresh pot of coffee Briana had made filled the room with its dark, bitter smell, mixing with the ever-present sage and lavender that clung to the walls.
Elise drifted over to her. “Is something wrong?” She leaned a hip against the counter next to Delainey, wrapping both hands around her own mug.
“I don’t like his sudden appearance,” Delainey admitted, keeping her voice as quiet as possible and hoping it didn’t carry over the seven feet to Emerson, who seemed completely engrossed in conversation with Briana.
“The timing’s a little weird,” Elise conceded. “But stuff like this happens, and I can guarantee you he’s not going to be as bad as my parents were.”
“It’s weird that Briana’s being this cool right now,” Delainey told her. “We had to put up defensive spells to keep Emerson away last time when they broke up. It was not pretty.”
“Yeah, but that was like three years ago,” Elise pointed out. “I’ve known Emerson my whole life, and he’s a decent guy, and relationships can be tricky. So maybe we shouldn’t judge him too harshly.” Elise was already playing with the little charm on the bracelet that Emerson had given her.
Delainey rolled her eyes. “Is there something tricky about your relationship that you want to share?”
Elise scowled. “Stop being a meddler,” she said, nudging Delainey’s arm with her elbow. Then she checked the time. “Do you want to go get some lunch later?”
Delainey agreed and used that as her excuse to escape the room and take a shower. She left Briana to deal with Emerson and hoped that they weren’t making a huge mistake.