Chapter Six #2
So I shut up and continue to take in the town as we drive down Main Street.
I peek in the rolled-up door of a mechanic’s shop as we go past and get a look at a half dozen magic carpets in various states of getting stripped for parts.
There’s a couple with three small kids walking into the general store called the Black Market Boutique.
Next door to it is Bad Bone Snacks on the left and Charming Revenge on the right, which sells non-witch-level potions and hexes tied to travel-sized charms according to the sign above the door.
When we stop at the only traffic light on the street, I check out Charming Revenge’s sidewalk chalkboard sign, which promises hazy day charms perfect to distract marks caught in a con job.
The woman sweeping the leaves from the sidewalk in front of the shop almost smiles at Darius until she catches sight of me clinging to him like a spider monkey.
She curls her lips back in a snarl that would be scarier if she had her canine teeth in.
“Old girlfriend?” I ask.
“Calista’s a friend,” Darius says. “That’s just the kind of warm welcome we give all the tourists who visit our little town.”
Yeah, that checks. I look around at the people going about their business in Arcadia’s small downtown.
When it comes to skin color, hair, height, age, weight, and fashion choices, there is a huge amount of variety—unless you are looking for someone who doesn’t howl at the full moon.
Every single person we pass has the golden hazel eyes of a werewolf.
For the first time, doubt about my ability to get out of this mess starts to creep up my spine.
“You get a lot of visitors?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Last one was three years ago.”
Oh, that’s not good. “What happened to them?”
He grins over his shoulder at me. “Best not to ask too many questions about that.”
Oh yeah, that is exactly how to get me to stop thinking about all the possibilities.
Sure, part of me is freaking the fuck out—especially since my transportation magic is glitching—but the other part of me is so damn curious about where he’s planning on taking this.
Even with my spells being off-center, I could still light Arcadia up.
The problem being until I figure out this boomerang thing—no, it is not some kind of fated mates ridiculousness—I’ll still be here after the magic show.
One motorcycle gang of werewolves I could handle, but a whole town of them? The odds are not in my favor.
So I’m stuck doing the most un-Effie thing ever—biding my time and being patient.
Darius parks his motorcycle in front of the building with the word courthouse carved above thick oak double doors across the street from the town square, which is made up of a gazebo and a fountain surrounded by a grassy park.
Totally expected for a small town until you realize the statue in the middle of the fountain isn’t a cupid or a fairy but a naked man in the middle of his transformation into his wolf form.
And the railing around the gazebo isn’t plain wood balusters, but the phases of the moon caved into stone.
I slide off the bike to get a closer look, but Darius hooks a finger in the back belt loop of my jeans and tugs me back, bringing me practically to his side before he lets go again.
“You’re coming with me.”
Yeah, isn’t that just the story of my life right now.
Since the view is so good (seriously, he has a very smackable ass), I follow him through the giant art deco–style wood doors of the courthouse. The ceiling has to be twenty feet high and is covered in a detailed mural of wolves in the woods.
People stop what they’re doing as we walk down the main lobby and gawk at us. There’s a few who give him a “Hey, Alpha” or a “Darius,” but for most it’s just that same chin tilt as if they respect him, but he’s sure not a friend or even someone they could go to for advice.
“You ever think of cracking a smile to lessen some of the tension?” I ask.
He shrugs. “What for?”
I wish I could say he isn’t serious, but he is.
Wowzers.
My mom is as tough as nails, but she isn’t all cold and guarded about it. She’s warm, personable, engaging. Darius is like a wall made out of ice blocks.
He takes me through a set of doors at the end of the hall, and I jolt to a stop the second I spot the iron-gated cell. That doubt doing the chicken dance up my back goes into double time mode.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
“Kinda dramatic, don’t you think?” I ask, keeping my body language loose as if I’m not rolling through a million scenarios right now.
“That’s me, just a theater kid at heart,” he shoots back as he moves with the practiced ease of a pickpocket and snags my cell phone from my back pocket.
Then he holds open the door to the cell for me.
I brazenly make my way through, too much of a Sherwood to show even a smidge of weakness.
The windows are high up, yeah, but it’s not like I can’t call up a quick bounce spell.
The only question is: Would that get me out of Arcadia or send me right back to my grumpy host?
I’m barely through the door when it clanks shut behind me.
“Don’t bother with your magic,” he says. “The charms have held more powerful witches than you.”
Turning around, I spot them. They aren’t charms, not really. They’re runes carved out of bone—probably witches’ bones—and they’re really old, judging by the wear and tear on the twine holding them in place above the cell door. Crude but effective, for a while, at least.
Determined not to let him see I’m really starting to freak out, I lift an eyebrow in challenge and step up to the bars. “You really think that will hold me?”
He doesn’t give an inch, sticking to his spot on the other side of the bars, his hands resting loosely on the iron. “We both know you aren’t going anywhere outside of this cell charmed to keep you inside until I say you can.”
My pulse is racing, and it has nothing to do with my situation so much as it has to do with Darius.
Fuck me. I’ve been attracted to a lot of guys, girls, and everything in between before, but this is different.
The lack of control is more than a little intoxicating.
I should be thinking about all the ways he could have hidden a charm on me—including a strand of clip-in hair, a transfer tattoo, a single cursed thread wrapped around a button—but all I can focus on is all the ways I can get into Darius’s pants.
“Is this when you want me to beg?” I manage—barely—to keep the “because I will” to my own damn self.
He lowers his head so his face presses against the bars, as if he feels this tug too, as if he is having trouble ignoring it. “Is making you beg one of your turn-ons?”
“As if you could handle me,” I say, which would have been a great line if it weren’t for the fact that it comes out all breathy and wanty.
“Sounds to me like you’ve been thinking about all the ways I could get you to do just that.” He winks at me and steps back, flexing his fingers and doing a little shake as if to get rid of the scent of me. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to imagine all sorts of things until I get back.”
He walks out of the jail, leaving me alone and worked up.
That is just rude. I do not need to add incredibly horny on top of everything else that’s going on right now.
Pacing back and forth, I start to plot and to plan, which is so very not me.
I’m a doer, a go-getter, a forget-dipping-a-toe-just-jump-in-already kinda gal.
This series of events, however, has put the kibosh on that.
It’s just not—
I’m pacing my cell on the inhale, and on the exhalation I’m back in the jumbly-wumbly wormhole thing with just enough time to register an “oh fuck” before I pop back into Arcadia.
More specifically, I poof out of midair onto Darius’s lap as he sits in the gazebo surrounded by his aunt Artemis, Nikos the sneering werewolf from the highway, and a handful of others who look like they’ve been up to no good.
Everyone is staring open-mouthed at me—except Darius’s aunt. She’s practically floating with excitement. Well, at least someone is happy with this development, because I’m sure not and neither is Darius.
Wait a minute.
Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.
Mr. Alpha Grumps is not happy.
At all.
Isn’t that just fucking delightful?
Leaning into the opportunity to really ruffle his currently metaphorical fur, I shoot him a saucy grin and ask, “Miss me?”