Chapter 12
Mateo exhaled as he stepped into the house. It hadn’t occurred to him when he headed for the witch’s house that there would be some kind of magical alarm to keep him out. If there was, it seemed to be off.
Nor did he anticipate running into the entire coven, which was another bizarre oversight on his part. If someone came knocking on the door of the pack, how often would they find him alone? The answer wasn’t never, but it was pretty damn close.
“I thought you were zooming,” the shorter woman said as he was ushered inside.
“That’s not a word, Niamh,” Cat said. “And no, he came in person.”
He stopped short when he got beyond the door. There seemed to be an entire arsenal of ancient weapons lined up beside the stairs.
“Are you guys big-game hunters?” he asked, feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach at the evidence of their aggression.
“That’s exactly it,” the taller one said. “But you’re safe. We only go after the big predators.”
He had to sit on his wolf at the insult and implication that he wasn’t a big predator and followed meekly into the sitting room to the left of the foyer.
Fortunately, the purple theme didn’t continue inside, but neither did any sense of interior decorating at all.
One stuffed paisley armchair was half buried in plaid cushions.
A scratched upright piano was covered by an array of plants that could not be good for it.
A coffee table was piled high with at least a dozen books of every size on bizarre topics like British pubs, the Enlightenment, and birds of the rainforest.
He noticed the scent the most, even in his human form. Something boiling smelled like tomatoes and diesel oil. Underlying that were a dozen plants and a thousand more spices, herbs, and who knew what else drifting in the air. He sneezed and tried to breathe through his mouth.
He was pointed to the armchair, which meant he didn’t have to look at it, but regretted it when he sat down and just kept sinking until he could rest his elbows easily on his knees without bending his spine.
He crossed his legs and squinted at the brochure he had to pitch to a bunch of witches.
How had the last five minutes taken such a turn?
How had the last week of his life taken such a turn?
“I do appreciate the paper quality,” Cat said as she sank gracefully onto a leather couch and tucked her legs under her. She wore a flowy skirt that did something to his brain.
He cleared his throat. “We are known for our…paper.”
“Why don’t I get you some tea?” Niamh said, a statement that seemed to alarm Cat, but she didn’t stop the old woman as she bustled out of the room.
Cat cleared her throat. “Siobhan, could you possibly grab my notebook? I forgot it on the counter.”
The taller woman with hair like the bride of Frankenstein nodded once and stomped out.
Claws clicked on wood, and he braced as an old, gigantic wolfhound came pelting around the corner.
“Ducky, don’t!” Cat shouted.
The dog ignored her completely and went right for him. At this height, the dog was taller than he was, a situation completely unacceptable to his wolf, who tried to shift before Mateo got control. Ducky may have gotten a glimpse of that battle because he ran howling out of the room.
“What is going on out there?” a woman called from the hallway.
“Ducky saw a, um, bee,” Cat shouted and then leaned toward him quickly. “We have less than a minute. What are you doing here? You’re so lucky the wards are down.”
He went cold. So, there was some kind of alarm system.
Before he could answer, he heard footsteps coming back.
“Do not drink the tea,” she said. “She puts in a truth potion.”
His mouth fell open. “You drug your vendors?”
“Um, more like bespell?”
“That’s not better.”
He shook his head vehemently as Niamh walked into the room with a delicate porcelain cup. She put it down on what looked to be a children’s book about frogs on the coffee table.
“That smells...” he began and trailed off. He couldn’t imagine how to describe it—like lemon and ozone.
Siobhan stomped back in with a notebook and settled beside her sister on the white cotton cushions of a chaise, and he met all three witches’ gaze and then looked down at the brochures in his hand.
He took a deep breath. “So I just present this.”
“Is this your first stop?” Niamh said kindly.
“Yes, new to the job,” he blurted, and tried to remember presentations by vendors for his own business. Granted, most of the time they were selling access to multimillion-dollar data centers or transcontinental underground cables, but essentially the concept was the same. Business was business.
“Why don’t you focus on your favorites?” Cat said and pointed her chin at the booklet in his hands. “It gives us more of a chance to see what you’re passionate about rather than a written recitation.”
He grimaced. He had planned to read out the brief paragraphs beside each book.
“Great idea.” He drew his glasses out of his pocket and put them on before flipping it open.
Cat cleared her throat, and he glanced at her. She looked flushed.
“You wear glasses,” she said.
“I told you that. No, I didn’t. I told somebody recently.” He gulped and literally hid behind the brochure. He was glad the wolf was happy to see her and not protesting this ignominious task. “Just trying to pick a favorite. There are so many good ones.”
The first page was on astrology, and he couldn’t say anything about that, so he went on. The second and third pages were also about astrology.
He scoffed at the title on one page and turned that into, “Ohhh, here’s a good one. The Science of Astrology.”
He glanced around, and Niamh nodded. Siobhan crossed her arms, and Cat sealed her lips.
“Some might argue that there is no science to astrology and the accidental arrangement of random stars in the sky has absolutely no bearing on our lives, especially because we don’t have the same configuration of stars as when these systems were made up because the universe is expanding all the time, not to mention galaxies are changing, stars are becoming supernovae, and…
” He glanced up. No one was smiling except Cat, who was openly grinning at him, and he cleared his throat.
“But they would be wrong. There is actually real and amazing science to this ancient art.”
“There’s science in art?” Cat repeated.
“Actually, that is an interesting story, how humans have been looking toward the heavens for meaning since time immemorial. In the Western system, it was considered a perfect realm, while everything on earth down here was changeable. That still affects how we think about the world today, even though we know what everything is made of now. It’s why quintessential is my favorite word. ”
“I beg your pardon?” Siobhan said.
“Quintessential is Latin for the fifth element, meaning the stars. We know now there are 118 elements, far more than five, but we still talk about the fifth element every single day.”
“Fascinating,” Cat said. She almost sounded like she meant it.
“And what is your star sign?” Niamh asked.
He blinked. “That’s very personal information, but I can talk instead about my favorite star, which is Polaris, the north star, which you can trace from the handle of the Big Dipper. It’s almost exactly over the pole, but not quite, since our planet is off kilter.”
“But since that’s not on the ecliptic, that would not be a part of the zodiac,” Cat said. She had turned an odd shade of pink.
“No, of course not,” he said, coming back to himself, “but its influence is, um, constant.”
“So you don’t like astrology at all,” Siobhan said, and Mateo reached for the cup automatically and then yanked his hand back as if it had burned him. “It’s, um, hot.”
“But you sell books for a publisher that sells astrology books,” Niamh said slowly.
“I, um, believe any kind of framework can surface blind spots and true desires. It’s not you, but the stars. That actually is science.”
“So, consulting all the books in your hand is about as useful as consulting a stranger off the street, right?” Cat asked with an edge in her voice.
“Yep,” he said happily and then remembered where he was. “No. My books are better.”
“Right,” Siobhan said.
Niamh stood up delicately. “I’m going to get you more tea. Perhaps something with ice?”
She bustled out, and Siobhan followed.
“What are you doing here?” Cat said. “And what was that?”
“What did you want me to say? The Pleiades are going to make you rich this year?”
“They’re not on the zodiac either.”
“They are on the ecliptic!”
“Oh yeah, they’re in Taurus, so I guess so, but only the stars in the constellations matter.”
“You cannot believe this!” he exploded, suddenly questioning his own sanity for trying to rip his life apart for this girl who apparently took business decisions from three stars surrounding some other stars.
“I know that the world is a great deal more complicated and magical than most people can ever believe,” Cat said, “and I know not to dismiss literally anything. I also know the power of suggestion.”
He closed his eyes. “But you still consult your horoscope every single day.”
“So a random girl generating content for her blog can tell me it’s going to be terrible? No. But that one’s pretty good.” He looked down as she pointed to a book on the page called The Year Ahead.
“Okay.”
“When were you born?” she asked.
“January 3rd.”
“Oh my god, you are such a Capricorn.”
“Am I?”
“It’s literally called the CEO sign!”
He scoffed. “It is not.”
She dug a book out of the pile on the coffee table. He vaguely recognized the cover from the brochure in his hand. She read, “Disciplined, vision, strategic thinker.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “Wouldn’t that be you?”
“Hunh.”
He shook his head. “I was never supposed to be a CEO.”
“No? You accidentally founded a company?”