Page 18 of Thistle Thorns

“And these are Misty’s aunts, Erika and Helena, and her father Thomas.” She used the aliases so easily I wondered if they used them regularly outside the Hawthorne estate, or if my grandmother was really that good of a liar.

“A-and this is Emmett Trinket,” I mumbled the rest of the introductions.

“Lovely to make your acquaintance, sir,” Grandmother said smoothly. Then she gestured to the indoor flea market. “And where might one find women’s clothes amidst all this… variety?”

“Right this way, ma’am.” As he began leading the way to a corner of the store I didn’t know existed, he stopped short and turned. “Miss Misty—”

“I remember where the menswear section is,” I answered, flashing him a smile.

He bobbed his head with a goofy grin and gestured for the “lovely, regal ladies” to follow after him. Nudging my elbow, Dad prompted me to show him the way. After all, a witch separated from her coven was weak. Or so I’d been led to believe.

As he systematically went through every piece of clothing, choosing functionality over fashion, I perused the red plaid flannel shirts, looking for one with the tiny yellow stripes I liked.

“Red attracts too much attention,” he told me. “I need drab, forgettable colors.”

“I’m not picking it out for you,” I replied, my attention still fixed on the shirts. “I need a new nightshirt.”

“Nightshirt?” The hangers he’d been clacking through became eerily silent. A moment later, he was right next to me, clothing for him, Otter, and Uncle Badger draped over his forearm. He thumbed the shirt next to the one I was examining. “This looks similar to the shreds of fabric I found in the woods where the bear shifted.”

“Cool coincidence.”

“Misty,” he admonished. “Has that bear—” His mouth grappled for a phrase that would both convey his question and not destroy the image of his innocent daughter. “Slept over?”

The memory of my hand reaching out and touching the depression in the bed where Arthur had slept beside me threatened to unleash other memories, specifically the ones that had led him to my bed to begin with. But I refused to blush in front of my father.

“Don’t you mean have I mated with him?” I asked, flinging back the words he’d used in the moonflower grove. “Yes to one and no to the other.”

“What?”

Without replying, I pulled an acceptable nightshirt replacement from the hanger and began the zigzagging path back to the checkout counter, shoving thoughts of the lumbersnack shifter from my mind. Thistle thorns, why can’t I stop thinking about him?

You are mine, Meadow, a wicked part of me recounted his words.

There was a nuance there my mind was missing, even as my body reacted shamelessly to those four little words.

I needed to talk to Cousin Lilac as soon as possible. She knew more than anyone else about shifters and their effects on… whoever and whatever they were affecting. And as if I had any time to think about these things with Marten in a demon prison! Or rather, an Unseelie prison, if Arcadis could be believed.

Lost in my worried thoughts, I wove through the familiar stacks of knickknacks and oddities to the checkout counter. I’d pay for my new nightshirt and then go wait in the car and wrap my head around, well, everything. Just as I was approaching the shelves with all the antique green- and rose-colored glass, the little bell chimed over the door again, announcing the arrival of another customer.

I knew the sound of that proud gait, even though those feet had swapped out their kitten heels for stylish suede boots.

“Misty,” my father began chastising me again, having caught up with me.

“Get down,” I whispered, yanking him into a crouch behind the shelves of glass. Sawyer squirmed in the confines of the foraging bag as it got squished between my stomach and thighs.

Dad shucked the clothes and drew his knives, yellow-green magic writhing down their blades. “What?”

I shook my head. “Who.”

He rose slightly, just enough to catch sight of Grandmother by the jewelry display cases. Though no longer in sight, the elderly gentleman had every piece of opal and moonstone in stock out on a piece of black velvet for her inspection, which she was doing with her own jeweler’s loupe. That was just for show, of course, but it masked the careful probing of her magic.

The crystals could be boobytrapped, of course, without the human even knowing, and the last thing she wanted to do was blow up the indoor flea market. Not because of the destruction, but because of the scene it would cause. The Hawthornes, just like Misty Fields, needed to keep a low profile until their work in Redbud was complete.

“Mr. Trinket,” Ms. Charlotte Harris trumpeted, her suede footfalls carrying further into the store. “Christmas is upon us, and I will not be outdone by Mayor Robert’s sister Rosalie at this year’s Winter Fete. She believes herself the queen of Redbud, though everyone in town knows that title is rightfully mine. The fete’s theme is frost and ice, and I want diamonds, Mr. Trinket. Barring that, anything large and sparkly. No doubt she’ll already have cleared out Bianca’s Bling Boutique to spite me, and I am not paying those exorbitant prices in Evansville or Indianapolis, so you’re my only hope. Mr. Trinket!”

She came into view then, and I snuck a look at my father to see if he had the same first impression I’d had when I’d first met her. His face was stoic, though his light brown eyes watched her like a hawk, no doubt gauging if she was a threat or not. Probably not, what with her done up in her customary pearls, two the size of marbles drooping from her earlobes, and a full-length fur coat of some white animal. White hair, swept into a French twist and pinned under a pearl-studded hairnet, white gloves, white suede boots… the only splash of color on her was the cranberry-colored lipstick on her pinched mouth.

“She’s just a human woman,” Dad murmured to me, though he didn’t take his eyes off her. His magic winked out and he replaced his knives. “What threat can she be?”

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