Page 7 of The Witch is Back

Coward.

“I’ll see you then.” He turned to go, paused, looked back. His eyes swept her body, leaving her skin flushed. “You look good.”

She stubbornly refused to say anything to that garbage, especially as it felt false. And she hated that her pulse skipped regardless.

His eyes lingered. “And happy birthday, Emmaline.”

“Emma,” she said a beat later, but he was already gone.

With his scent lingering on the air like the remnants of a spell, for a moment she did feel like shy, scared Emmaline again. It terrified her. That quickly gave way to a hot lick of anger that he’d sweep into her life as easily as he’d left it.

Chester pawed her leg and then bumped his head against it.

With a short breath, she nodded. “You’re right. We have to do it, so no point dwelling.”

After all, she had Leah to deal with first.

And Goddess knew what Tia was going to say when she found out that Bastian was back.

Emma glanced down at Chester. “We’d better hide the potions.”

CHAPTER 3

The initial meeting had been harder than he’d expected.

When Bastian stepped from the portal he’d created from the bar into the bedroom his parents had maintained, he gave in to temptation and dragged his hands over his face before simply covering it.

He hadn’t handled it well.

Understatement. He’d handled Emmaline about as well as if he’d tried to pick up butter with hot hands.

As he’d prepared to see the girl he’d once been engaged to, the girl he’d trusted and loved, it hadn’t crossed Bastian’s mind that she’d have changed. Of course, he’d known she’d look older than the sweet twenty-one-year-old he’d run from. He just hadn’t expected to be confronted by such a direct stare from those quiet brown eyes.

It had thrown him off enough that he’d briefly forgotten his plan. The plan to don his old persona like a tux and be Bastian Truenote: charming, devil-may-care, universally adored. He’d imagined sweeping into the bar—a bar, Emmaline owned a bar?—displaying his smile and watching her melt for him.

Instead, he’d been thoroughly, if quietly, reprimanded and sassed. By a girl who’d once turned crimson if he so much as walked into the room.

He’d fumbled for control of the situation, but she’d blocked him at every turn.

The girl he’d practically abandoned at the altar would have thrown herself into his arms. That Emmaline had been slight, waif-like, with hunched shoulders and a serious expression except for the occasions he’d wheedled a shy smile from her.

This new Emmaline was...different. Even with the same brown eyes, the same brown hair, the same clothes that helped her blend so well with the humans she’d chosen to live with, she wasn’t his sweet Emmaline. The one he’d left to protect.

Unless she’d played a part in why he’d run.

That suspicion had nibbled at him for seven years, had kept him away so he wouldn’t have to uncover the truth, but now he had no choice but to face it.

The Emmaline he’d known, or thought he’d known, had accepted their impending marriage. Had looked forward to it in her own demure way, and had been pushing for a quick wedding. Unlike him.

Emmaline had been his best friend, but he had chafed against the childhood contract, the demands on how he spend the rest of his life. The pressure he’d felt to play the perfect part. And now here he was playing a part again. The part of a man who hadn’t discovered the truth about the Joining—an unconventional clause buried deep in their engagement contract, a clause with the sole purpose of draining him of his familial magic.

The part of a man who hadn’t tried to tell someone and discovered a silencing hex had been placed on him by Goddess knew who.

A man who couldn’t shake the suspicion that his best friend, his fiancée, had known and had betrayed him for all the power she didn’t have.

And so he’d run. It had been the only thing he could think to do. Run and he’d be free of the contract. Run and the problems were left behind, along with everything and everyone else.

But now his family was facing a worse threat.

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