Page 203 of Blue Moon Mistress

“Do you want to tell us about your little excursion?” Joshua asks, bringing me the robe I’d left slung over the sofa last night. “I may have disposed of the evidence, but we all know you went out, barefoot and barely dressed.”

“And,” Chase added, blowing on his coffee. “You only get so sucked into searching for a spell you ignore us when something’s really wrong.”

The timer goes off with a sharp trill, and Johnny mutters the whole time as he pulls out the pan of muffins.

“Stay there.” Thomas says, his stern tone emphasized by a finger pointed at the chair, and my butt in it.

While he and the others move around my kitchen, it gives me time to decide just what to tell them. Not because I want to hide things from them… but because I need to decide what I’m willing to believe is true.

By the time food is placed in front of me and they all sit, watching me, warily, the words are less of a jumble in my mind.

“I’m not exactly surewhathappened, but if you want to know, I can tell you what Ithinkhappened.”

“We want to know.” Johnny’s fork clacked against the plate. “We always want to know what happens.”

I nod, letting the bite I took give me another moment to word it correctly in my head.

“I woke up in the woods, about a quarter of a mile south.”

They blink at me, none of them saying a thing.

This is the part they’re not going to like. “And when I did a tiny spell to see what or who pulled me out of the house… It looked like the ghost of Aphrodite Lourdes.”

Joshua curses under his breath. “Can a ghost actually hurt you?”

“One that’s connected to you? Yes. Especially one that’s a witch. But I don’t know how she’s connected to me.”

“So what do we do?” Chase asks, focus on the mini quiche in his hand.

“I don’t know how, or why yet. But I will figure it out.”

Joshua looks at the back door, and then to me. “Do you know what woke you up?”

“I think it was a combination of your wolves, and the wards around my property line.”

They all nod and—after sharing a glance between them—they go back to their food with pinched brows.

“You guys are eerily calm right now.”

Johnny laughs. “Oh, I amveryfreaked out. But I promised that I’d keep it together when weird stuff started to happen. You’re a witch. We’re werewolves. Weird comes with the territory.”

“We know you’ll tell us what we can do, when you know how we can help.” Chase watches me for a long moment before he says, “If there’s something that threatens you, it threatens all of us.”

“Besides,” Thomas says with a smile. “I already told you you had me all week. That hasn’t changed. You’ll always have at least one big bad wolf around to keep you in the house.”

But that’s not what truly scares me.

“If she’s connected to me, she’s still connected to you. Please keep your amber on and tell me the second anything weird happens.”

This is all too new to me. I refuse to let a dead woman take it away.

Six

We finish breakfast around noon,and three of them have to head out soon, but while they’re changing, I snatch up the blankets and take them into my laundry room, stuffing the washer full.

“Hey,” Johnny catches me around the waist as soon as I switch the thing on and he turns me around. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

I nod as his hand snakes up around my neck to brush his thumb across my jaw. “We’ll figure it out.”

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