Chapter 5
Jena shoved another branch out of her way, huffing a lock of sweaty hair from her eyes.
The tail-end of October should not be this hot, especially before noon.
She slapped at a bug. Where was a harem of pixies to chow down on stupid things when you needed them?
There’d been plenty of the little idiots in town, and them having the munchies was a given.
“Why did I let you talk me into this again?” she grumbled.
Felix laughed from farther up the trail. “Because you loooove me…”
She did, but this sucked, and she was pretty sure the shop’s lack of air conditioning had more to do with her hoofing it through the woods to go swimming than anything else.
Why didn’t she remember the path to the falls being so steep?
She looked around. Actually, come to think of it, she didn’t remember this particular path at all. “How much farther is it?”
“A half mile or so,” Felix said, stopping to take a sip from his water bottle and watch her huff to catch up. “Didn’t you have to walk in the city?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t have goat paths like this. It was all flat, beautiful pavement as far as the eye could see…” She wiped the sweat from her brow again. Everything there also had central air. “What possessed you to pick this way to come up? Did the river path wash away?”
He rolled his eyes. “No, but I figured after all that concrete you could stand to take in the majesty of the vista.” He swept a hand at the autumn tree line like he was delivering it.
Beyond was a panoramic view of the valley, and okay, it was pretty, but not enough to justify the freaking incline—Her gaze landed on a ribbon of smoke below, the scent of roasting meat in the wind. “Are we cutting through pack territory?”
“Maybe,” Felix drawled, failing to look innocent.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“You know, you never used to be so uptight.”
“I am not uptight.” Okay, maybe she was, but she had enough on her plate without asking for more trouble.
“If you say so.” He looked her up and down and cocked a brow. “Regardless, it’s not going to be an issue. They moved their manor house to that new development over on Sunnyside a couple of years back.”
Jena stopped in her tracks to tug the seam of her yoga pants.
Her inner thighs were gonna be raw after this.
“Ew. Where they’re putting up those godawful turbine things?
” She shook her head at Felix’s nod. Who the hell would trade this for that?
“That’s crazy, and all that smoke down there says otherwise. ”
Felix shrugged. “It’s more of a frat house arrangement now.
I was at a party they threw a couple of months back.
” He got a wicked grin on his face, and Jena could only imagine what that had entailed.
“The part of the pack left out here isn’t like the one you remember, and we don’t have to worry about big, bad Malcom lurking in the woods. ” He waggled his fingers all spooky.
“Ugh, don’t joke about him.” And definitely don’t say his name three times into a mirror at midnight.
He’d probably appear. Jena shivered, uncapping her own water bottle.
She took a sip. Malcom had been the town boogie-man for as long as she could remember.
Even Aggie had crossed to the other side of the street when she’d seen him.
“Me? Joke? Never. Come on,” Felix said, jamming his water back into his pack and flipping the bag over a shoulder. “It’s all downhill from here.”
Jena snorted, glad the bent of his powers wasn’t prophecy as she followed him. “So tell me about this invite I got from the coven.”
“You got an invite?” he asked, glancing back far too coyly.
She glared at him, and he laughed. “You have no idea how excited they are you’re back—well, not Matilda, but she only gets excited when something catastrophic happens.
The rest of them are positively slavering over the possibility of having thirteen members again.
They haven’t been able to do a proper working since your mother died, and with Aggie so sick… ”
“You know, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other witches in the world.” Jena frowned.
“True, but there’s only one line of sin-eaters.”
Her feet rooted. “You know I don’t do that.”
“Don’t isn’t can’t,” he said over his shoulder, then stopped to face her. “And I get that you don’t have a total handle on it, but if I could absorb someone else’s karma and flip the power from it into my own spell—”
“You’d have such the bubble butt,” Jena snarked, rubbing her arms at the unexplained chill that’d come over her. She hated talking about that aspect of her abilities. Hexes were bad enough, but at least they were commonplace. Sin-eating was a family specialty she’d never asked for and didn’t want.
And like Felix had said, she also didn’t totally know how to use it.
He rolled his eyes. “Well, duh, but that’s entirely beside point.
You know, if you figured out how it worked, you might be able to release your line from being tied to the node.
It hasn’t accepted a new guardian, and trust me, the coven has tried everything short of sacrificing someone’s firstborn.
Matilda’s freaking out about it becoming an unseelie mound the way its magic has been leaking lately. ”
Jena snorted. Like that was gonna happen.
There hadn’t been a mound in this part of the country in forever.
The grid of leylines wouldn’t allow it. Granted, the peninsula the town called home was at the hairy edge of that, but seriously?
Havers? “Maybe if they bulldozed the ruins up there, whatever evil fairies are hanging around would get the hint and find some other place to mess with,” she muttered, the thought of the remains of the house she was born in making her skin prickle again.
“It doesn’t work like that, and bulldozing it isn’t going to change anything.
Matilda’s always going to make things out to be worse than they are, but it is a place of power, and that draws—” Felix gave a long-suffering sigh at her eye roll.
“Jena, we both know you’re ridiculously gifted; it’s time you owned it.
Don’t think I don’t know you ran away to the city trying to avoid who you are. ”
So he was right about that—okay, all of it—but screw him. She started walking again. “It doesn’t matter who I am, they want me for who my mother was, and I’m not her. She’s dead, and I’m not joining their crappy coven.”
“Jena—” He raced to catch up with her. “Look, you’re gonna do whatever you’re gonna do, but I think you should consider it.”
“You and Aggie both,” she muttered, flicking a bug from her face. God, that was annoying. Stupid thing had the entire forest to fly around in.
“And that should tell you something right there.”
Jena shot him an evil glare, but he was right about that too, damn him.
He’d also been right about everything going downhill. Twenty minutes later, she leaned against a bole of a tree, muttering an apology to the dryad for getting it all sweaty and sucking wind, her ankle on fire. The traitorous thing had twisted when a rock skittered out from under her.
“You gonna make it?” Felix asked.
“I’m fine. I just need to soak it.” And lose like twenty—okay thirty—pounds. That wasn’t gonna happen, but thankfully, they were close enough to hear the falls, even if they couldn’t—
Felix’s head jerked to the side like he’d heard something else, and he craned his neck to peer through the trees.
“What is—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off and crept farther off the path, into the woods.
A prickle went over her skin as he pulled his power—distortion—and his form muddled into the surroundings.
If she hadn’t known he was there, she never would’ve noticed him.
When he’d gotten about ten feet away from her, he crouched down behind a fallen tree and went still, totally disappearing.
A handful of breaths later, he dropped his power and crooked a finger over his shoulder for her to join him.
Jena limped through the bracken, considerably more noticeable, and knelt beside him.
Felix put a finger to his lips before a grin split them, and he slowly lowered a branch.
Holy shit.
They weren’t the only people who had decided to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and come to the falls. Half a dozen male weres lounged around the pool beneath the plunging stream, in and out of wolf form, and the ones sans fur were completely naked.
Jena felt her cheeks heat. “Felix!” she hissed. Nudity wasn’t a big deal for weres, but peeping on them was still wrong.
“Shh! I’m busy…damn, would you look at the ass on the blond over there…”
Her eyes flicked to the were’s admittedly impressive backside. “If they catch us here—”
“You’re right. They might invite us to join them for a swim,” he said, his voice laden with mock seriousness. He dropped his bag. “I volunteer as tribute.”
“Felix! We shouldn’t be here,” she whisper-yelled—
And he was gone.
Shit. Freaking Felix. Jena chewed her lip as he strolled over to the group. She couldn’t hear what they said, but a moment later, his shirt was off and his hands were at his belt. Damn it. Felix’s pasty rear was not anything she wanted to see.
Jena sat back on her haunches and sighed. And now going out there after him would just be weird…not that being the only girl in a grotto full of naked dudes wouldn’t be.
Whatever. She had plenty of work she could be doing back at the shop and hadn’t wanted to come on this stupid hike anyways. She worked her way out of the bracken and back onto the path—
And bumped right into a very bare, very solid chest. Her eyes flicked down.
Sweet baby Jesus.
“Jena?”
She scrambled back at the voice. Fuck her life, fuck her life… “Chase!”
He stood on the path in all his naked glory except for that dumb hat, pulled low. His throat bobbed, and he whipped it off, covering his junk. “W-what are you doing here?”