Chapter 7 #2
“Honestly? I wanted more time with you. Is it okay? I can circle back, if—”
“I don’t have any plans this afternoon,” I said. “Well, a couple of things, but I can work them around my new schedule, which involves lots of holding hands and kissing you.”
“Excellent plan. Would you be amenable to developing a new schedule for me, because I very much appreciate the way you’ve structured yours.”
“Hmm. That sounds like a lot of work.” I eyed him playfully. “I’ll expect to be … compensated.”
“We can discuss my compensation package at length when we get home,” he said, and waggled his brows.
Cecil let out an obnoxious raspberry, and Fennel sighed.
“We’re weirding out the kids, honey,” Ronan said.
We laughed and flirted outrageously for the rest of the drive to Smokethorn.
“Let’s stop at the Desert Rose.” I sat up higher in my seat and pointed at the coffee shop coming up on our right. “I need an iced latte and a scone like I need my next breath.”
“You got it.” Ronan pulled into an empty spot in front. “So, any ideas on new names for the bar?
“Nothing other than ‘The Pack Bar.’ Let’s think on it while we order lattes and lavender scones.”
“Woman, you are easily distracted by baked goods.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The Desert Rose Café was a coffee house located in a converted old house two blocks away from the Siete Saguaros. It was owned by two nearly identical Fae cousins, Kiv and Gela. The Mellizas made great coffee and teas, but their most special offering was their lavender scones.
It’s possible I was a little biased—they used my lavender to make them, after all—but there was a kind of magic layered in with the butter and flour. Fae magic? I don’t know, but whatever it was made the little biscuit-cakes taste like a slice of heaven.
Stepping inside the café was like walking into a cool, vanilla-scented hug.
Sunlight glinted off the glossy hardwood floors and wrought-iron bistro sets. The cafe was empty, the last customer having held the door for us as they took their iced latte to go.
Kiv held up their hand when they saw us. “How many scones?”
“How many do you have back there?” I asked.
“Enough for everyone in the park. Should I pack them up for you?”
“Yes, and two large lattes. Iced. You know how I like ’em.”
“I do.” Gela smiled up at Ronan. “How do you take yours?”
Ronan glanced at the menu. “Plain. Coffee, milk, ice. No sweetener.”
“Pretty basic,” I said, and he nudged me with his hip. It felt good to be with him, really with him, again. When we could joke around with each other, things were okay. Better than okay. Solid.
“I know what you want, Cecil, you don’t have to— Damn it, don’t make it yourself.” Kiv chased after the surprisingly spry gnome as he shot to the back of the store where she kept the Fae specialties. “Fennel, Gela, grab him before he gets into the faery cakes. You know what happened last time.”
We took our coffees and the scones back to the truck. While we waited for the faery-cake troublemaker and Fennel to rejoin us, I pulled out my cell to text Ida that we’d soon be heading her way with goodies.
“Cecil needs help,” Ronan said.
“Pfft. Like you’re the first person to suggest that.”
Ronan shoved the key into the ignition and cranked up the air conditioner. KLXX was playing “Must Have Got Lost” by The J. Geils Band.
I sipped happily and hummed along to the chorus.
“Who are they?” Ronan asked.
“The Mellizas? You’ve met them before.”
“Not the baristas, them.”
I looked up, startled to see two women peering into our windows, one on my side, and one on his.
They were average height with light brown hair and brown eyes and had a similar, compact build.
They were dressed for spring, in flowy dresses, and if I’d had to guess, I’d have said they were sisters close to the same age but not twins.
The women began to chant in a language I didn’t recognize. It was guttural and clicky, with odd pitch changes and enough power behind it to rattle my teeth.
Oh no.
A witch language.
“Damn it, I haven’t finished my latte,” I grumbled.
“They aren’t shifters,” Ronan said. “I’d know.”
“No, they’re witches, mages, or something worse.” The women pressed their palms against the windows on either side of us, and the truck glowed red. “Also probably demon hunters.”
“The Org.”
“Who are you?” I yelled at the one on my side.
“Betty?” Ronan said, in a murmur that told me he was trying not to move his lips as he spoke. “Should I punch the window or is that a bad idea?”
“Bad idea,” I said in the same frozen-lipped murmur. “They’ll have accounted for that, and it could end up biting us in the ass.”
I listened harder, tried to pick up some of the commands in their chants but came up empty. Whatever magic language they were speaking, I couldn’t translate any of it.
The red glow intensified, and heat seared the cab. As the temperature rose, my anger did likewise. Power buried in the deepest, darkest part of me roused as if awakening from hibernation.
“Get away from this truck or I’ll make you regret it.” I snarled at the women.
There was a blinding flash, and the air was vacuumed straight out of my lungs. I gasped like a beached porpoise and reached for Ronan’s hand at the same time as he reached for mine.
Everything went dark.
We woke up—a few minutes? Hours? Days? later—still in the truck. My latte had spilled all over the floorboard. Ronan’s was in the cupholder, all the ice melted.
“Betty, what the hell just happened?”
I peered through the windshield. We were stuck in the desert. Literally. The truck was buried up to the windshield in dune sand. Surrounding us were buttery slopes of the stuff, remarkably undisturbed considering we had to have driven here.
Or had we?
“It looks like Glamis,” I said, referring to a community on the edge of the Algodones Dunes about thirty-five miles northeast of Smokethorn.
“How did they…?” Ronan gestured to the general everything around us. “How long have we…?”
“Give me a moment.” Given the state of his latte, we could rule out days. The sun was still high in the sky, so we could rule out hours. Minutes, then. Somehow, that was worse than hours, because it meant those sisters were not only powerful but scalpel precise.
“It’s magic,” I said, because I had nothing else.
“I’d kind of figured that out,” he said.
“Use your wolfy senses. Is anyone nearby?”
He mouthed the word “wolfy” then closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them, shook his head. “There’s nothing.”
“Can you hear anything?”
“No. There’s nothing. No scents, no sounds other than us, and no movement. The air tastes flat and hot—it’s like drinking from a can of soda that’s been out in the sun all afternoon.”
Dread crawled over me as I drew in a lung-clogging breath. He was right, and it wasn’t only the air. It was everything. I coughed, and it sounded distant, like someone clapping their hands half a mile away.
Had those Org women sent us to another realm? Had they banished us to Hades?
The nightmare memory of the demon Belial shoving my head through a portal flashed before my eyes, and panic jolted me.
“We can’t just sit here.” Ronan started messing with the window. “I’m going to climb out and see where we are.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave this truck. Not yet, at least. Please.”
He stopped what he was doing and slowly faced me. “Why?”
“Because it’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t know where we are.”
“Why, Betty?”
“Because I think … we might be in Hell.”