Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Delainey stumbled through the kitchen door, and Reece bumped into her. The coven house was chaos.
The kitchen didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in days.
Okay, dishes piled in the sink weren’t exactly out of the norm, but the counters hadn’t been swept, and neither had the floors.
It smelled like burnt coffee and herbs and a faint tang of sourdough.
A stockpot sat on the back burner with something dried and crusted around the rim, and the windowsill above the sink was crowded with protection stones that had been shoved aside to make room for a stack of unopened mail.
It felt so much like coming home that Delainey wanted to collapse to the floor in a tight little ball and never move again.
Her legs went a little weak. She stumbled forward until she could put her hands on the countertop of the kitchen island and squeeze her stinging eyes shut, feeling the adrenaline that had kept her going over the last few days drain out of her like she’d become a sieve.
Reece stepped up behind her and put a hand on the small of her back. At any other moment she might have ripped away, but she took the comfort his warm palm offered and had to scrunch her face up to keep from crying.
What the fuck was going on with her emotions right now?
She was home. They were safe. But they still had a ton of shit to deal with. She couldn’t afford to break down, and she refused to break down in front of Reece.
She straightened. “Come on,” she said.
She knew exactly where everyone would be. Unfortunately, the coven was starting to develop a kidnapping protocol.
The dining room was also chaos, but unlike the kitchen, it was organized.
Laptops were open on the table. A giant map was pinned down around the edges with several guidance stones.
The dry erase board was propped up against the wall, covered in a scrawl Delainey could barely make out.
Extension cords snaked across the hardwood floor from the single outlet by the door to the cluster of laptop chargers, creating a tripping hazard that no one had bothered to tape down.
She expected her coven sisters: Serena, Briana, Aya, and Elise. She was surprised to see Nico, though she probably shouldn’t have been. And Cole. Huh.
Cole stood at the head of the table with his arms crossed over his broad chest, stone-faced as ever, his pale skin and close-cropped hair making him look like he’d been carved from stone, immovable.
Her eyes almost skipped over Emerson, also sitting at the table, making the place incredibly crowded.
Emerson sat at the far end in a pressed button-down that looked absurdly clean compared to everyone else, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the overhead light and his posture as straight-backed and composed as if he were attending a faculty meeting.
She had definitely forgotten about his sudden and unwelcome appearance, what with being kidnapped by strangers and stuck in the woods and all.
Serena burst out of her chair and crossed the room, wrapping Delainey up in a hug and trying to tug her toward the table, then pulling back with her nose wrinkled.
The pink streaks in Serena’s brown hair were fading, and she was wearing an oversized university sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed past her elbows, her off-duty uniform.
“You kind of smell,” she said.
“Thank you for the warm welcome,” Delainey said, though she leaned into the hug for a half-second longer than she meant to before pulling away.
Serena tugged her, and Delainey went with Reece, her silent shadow, matching every step. Elise was the next one to come close, but she wasn’t in a hugging mood.
Right now she was in healer mode, all business. Elise’s blonde hair was pulled back in a hasty ponytail, and her blue eyes were sharp and clinical as she looked Delainey up and down, then shifted her gaze to Reece with the same assessing sweep.
“Sit down,” Elise ordered like she was a freaking drill sergeant. “Aya, go get them food and water.”
Well, Delainey wouldn’t say no to that. The dead man’s protein bar was long forgotten, and she hadn’t let Reece hunt for any more poor, unsuspecting rabbits.
Elise took hold of her hand once she sat down and didn’t make a comment on the manacles. They would get to that later. She was in triage mode, making sure nothing was about to kill Delainey. Everything else could wait.
Delainey felt the warmth of her power and relaxed into the sensation.
The heat spread from Elise’s fingertips up through Delainey’s wrist and forearm like stepping into a sunbeam, and for a moment Delainey could feel the magic probing gently through her, testing her pulse, her lungs, the soreness in her muscles and the raw blister on her heel. Elise had healed her before.
The last time she had a nasty cold, Elise had taken care of it with barely a wave of her hand. But Delainey was pretty sure nothing was physically wrong with her other than a few bruises and blisters on her feet. Elise pulled back after a moment and seemed to agree.
Then she turned to Reece, who was already waving a hand at her. “I’m fine. No need.”
“You will let her check on you,” Cole said from across the table. “And you’ll be nice about it.”
Reece narrowed his eyes but stood still and let Elise give him a quick scan. She took his hand, and he jerked back. “I don’t want a witch touching me,” he said.
Inside, Delainey flinched.
He certainly had no issues touching her, but she swallowed that down and filed it under things she was never, ever going to think about again. She couldn’t show any of it on her face right now, or her sisters would pounce.
They didn’t need to know about the momentary insanity that came from Reece’s fingers in her pants.
Aya came back with two glasses of water and a box of cold pizza.
Aya’s straight black hair was tucked behind her ears as usual, and she had a pencil stuck through the messy twist at the back of her head, the kind of detail that meant she’d been mid-research when they’d walked in.
She set it on the table, and Delainey swiped the water, guzzling it until her stomach hurt.
It was so cold it ached against her teeth, and she could feel it tracing a line of ice all the way down to her empty stomach.
Aya watched silently and went to refill the glass before Delainey could ask.
Delainey took a piece of cold pizza and bit into it.
Heaven. Gourmet. Michelin starred.
She didn’t even care that she didn’t like ham on her pizza.
She gobbled up one slice and then another, and then Reece reached in and grabbed his own before she could finish off the box without letting him get any.
After three days of one rabbit and one protein bar taken from a dead man, cold pizza was probably the best thing she had ever eaten.
“I’d like to invite Mark to take a look at Reece,” Cole addressed this to the room. Emerson was staring at them. Delainey noticed, but she didn’t exactly give a fuck right now. She wanted to eat her pizza in peace and then go sleep for a week.
The cuff clanged against the table, reminding her they were not out of the woods yet. That was enough to bring Serena’s attention to it. She didn’t stop Delainey from eating, but she grabbed her free hand and started looking at the metal. Delainey let her work.
“We’re going to have to get these off somehow,” Serena said, turning Delainey’s wrist over and running her thumb along the seam of the manacle where brass met skin. The skin beneath was red and chafed raw from days of friction. “We probably shouldn’t let the wolf go home until it’s taken care of.”
“Probably shouldn’t,” Briana agreed from where she stood near the dry erase board, one hand resting on the back of a chair, her strawberry-blonde braids pinned up in their usual crown, though several strands had come loose at her temples.
“I’m assuming whoever took you gave you this little souvenir?” Serena asked.
Aya had joined her now with a sketchbook, taking notes. She was already drawing the etchings on the manacle in quick, precise strokes, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
Delainey felt a little like a test subject, and she didn’t like it.
“Yes, this was their little present,” Delainey said, pulling her hand back just enough to take another bite of pizza before surrendering it again. “We woke up in a shack in the woods with no guards and these around our wrists.”
“They’re not killing you right now,” Elise said, stepping closer and laying two fingers against the manacle without actually touching Delainey’s skin, her brow furrowed in concentration. “I can feel that the power is affecting you somehow, but we have some time to figure this out.”
Briana had a contemplative look on her face. “Let’s have the wolf healer take a look before we do more magic. Maybe he’ll have some insight that we don’t.”
Emerson sputtered, but the rest of the coven looked fine, and Emerson was a guest. He didn’t get a say.
“Do you both want to get cleaned up before the others arrive?” Briana asked.
Delainey and Reece said “yes” in unison.
“You know where the bathrooms are,” was Briana’s reply.
“Oh, shit. That’s the other thing about the manacles.” Delainey held up her hand.
“What?” Aya asked, her pencil freezing mid-stroke over the sketchbook.
“We can’t get more than six feet apart.”
“These manacles bound you to a werewolf?” Serena shuddered, dropping Delainey’s wrist and stepping back to look at the metal with fresh horror. “Better you than me.”
“You should be so lucky,” Reece muttered from the chair beside Delainey, where he sat with his long legs stretched out under the table and his arms crossed, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.
Briana didn’t show them any mercy. “I guess you should be thankful for the shower curtain then. We’ll let you know when everyone gets here.”