CHAPTER 3 #2
“And when are you going to implement it?” she pressed. “After everyone in the city is already gossiping about the rift in the Kolbeck clan?”
Ronald put his right blinker on and steered us down a side street. He parked at the curb and turned to face Amy. “We meant to do it the day after Layla arrived, but events got away from us. Your brother is doing the best he can in a difficult situation.”
Amy crossed her arms over her belly. “Right. Take his side like you always do.”
Ronald reached out and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear with more care than I would have thought him capable of. She turned her face to the side and nuzzled her cheek into his palm.
What the fuck?
I glanced sideways at Michael, but he looked and felt untroubled by this show of affection between the pair.
Okaaay.
“I’m not taking his side,” Ronald said, dropping his hand from Amy’s face.
She looked sad to see it go.
Michael shifted beside me. “Announcing to the city at large that a MacKenzie Valley wolf now resides within its bounds is a delicate matter. My cabal of enforcers already knows. I’m sure that a few of our regular guards have figured it out as well.
Most likely, word is already spreading, but to ensure it reaches the right ears, James is visiting Murphy’s this afternoon. ”
Ah, yes. James. The flirty enforcer with the jaw-dropping good looks.
“Murphy’s?” I asked.
Michael’s eyes shifted back to me. “It’s a bar near the Common, on neutral ground. People who ply the trade of information can be found there. James will sell your secret, and before dawn tomorrow, all of the major players in Boston will have paid to learn it.”
I stared at him.
He rubbed his thumb over my hand in a soothing gesture. His dark eyes bored into mine, lending weight to his next words. “I meant to tell you the moment I arrived home from the office.”
So he had learned his lesson about keeping things from me. Good.
Ronald turned back around in his seat and shifted the vehicle into drive. I could tell from the houses around us that we were getting closer to the Kolbeck compound, and while the three wolves I shared the vehicle with continued to talk, I retreated into myself.
Fear clawed at the edge of my psyche, gaining ground with every bend in the road. Only Michael’s calm kept it from infecting me. Had Anna done something to my memories? Had she thralled me like she had Michael? Was I somehow still under her spell?
I didn’t feel like I was being controlled by magic.
Yes, I might regret some of my decisions from today, but I was 100 percent sure that they had been my decisions.
Just to be safe, I poked around in my head for a few minutes, trying to find some lingering foreign presence or the slimy, necromantic feel of bloodsucker magic.
Nothing but Michael and me in there.
The only slippery thing I detected was my memory.
Try as I might, I couldn’t fit the fragments together.
There were vampire-sized holes between them, and I was beginning to worry that Anna had stolen something important from me.
Or more like several somethings. From the way my pulse skyrocketed whenever I thought of Mary or the witches, it related to them in some way.
She’d told me I needed to be careful around both. The missing piece was why.
I glanced over at Michael. Was there some spell that would fill in the gaps?
Feeling my focus, he turned to look at me, even as he continued to speak to Ronald.
With our walls up, our thoughts were our own.
Michael’s shoulders had stiffened into a hard line when we’d reentered the city, and now that he was back in a three-piece suit, it felt like more than just a mental wall had gone up between us.
What was he thinking? Did he have regrets about what happened between us? Back in the alley, I’d felt a momentary pang of remorse myself, but now that I was beside him, now that we were touching, that sense of rightness, that sense of being home had returned.
Something shimmered in the corner of my eye.
I pulled my gaze from Michael to look at it, but it slipped from my focus like heat waves rising from a sunbaked sidewalk.
I stared out of the window, frowning. Trees crowded the narrow lane we drove down, too well manicured to have been left to nature.
At their feet, a stone wall lined the road.
These were the Kolbeck woods, the land an ancestor of Michael’s had purchased to screen them from the sounds of the city and give the wolves a buffer between them and their human neighbors.
Silver glittered in my periphery. I snapped my head around, faster than before, trying to chase it. The only thing I succeeded in was giving myself a neck ache.
There it was again!
I whipped my head left. It flitted from my sight once more, only to gather at the edges of my vision, taunting me.
“Layla?” Michael said.
“I thought I saw something,” I told him.
I turned in my seat, looking out my window. The silver shied from my vision as I faced the land opposite the Kolbecks’. Slowly, I shifted back toward their compound, and that effervescent sheen crept back in, starting when I reached the edge of the manicured woodland.
A pit of dread yawned open inside me. I knew what this was: the ward that surrounded their property. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, whereas before today, I had only ever become aware of wards after blundering face-first into them.
Michael’s pulse hitched when mine did, and as my fear leached over the bond, an answering thread of worry rose from him in the back of my mind.
I turned to face him.
What? he mouthed.
Being very careful to enunciate the words, I sent a meaningful look over his shoulder, and mouthed back, The ward.
His hand clamped down on mine, worry replaced by shock.
He hadn’t tattooed me. We’d fled back to Boston in the predawn hours, and he’d immediately rushed into the office, promising to do it once he got home. But then Amy showed up, the witch attacked her, and all thoughts of my budding magical abilities had fled from our minds.
Ronald slowed the vehicle and hit a button on his visor.
Ahead of us, a pair of massive wrought iron gates ground open.
With the way my life had been going lately, I shouldn’t have been surprised that now, of all times, was when I began to absorb Michael’s abilities.
We’d spent our brief time as mates rushing from one catastrophe to the next, and if we kept up this pace, one of them would eventually expose us.
I sent my gaze heavenward. Yes, hello up there. ’Tis I, Layla Fitzpatrick, your humble servant. I’d like to put forth a formal petition for another five-minute break from the chaos my life has become.
Unfortunately, my prayer went unanswered.