Page 120 of Blue Moon Mistress

Joshua nods and tosses his bag straight at Johnny’s head.

He catches it, of course, and smiles with bared teeth.

Thomas is in the driver’s seat when we go out the garage door and Joshua helps me up into the back seat.

Sandwiched between him and Chase, I know I’m the only one in the car who’s not worried about the outcome of this trip. And without going home first—the opposite direction—I can’t do anything to alleviate the stress.

Nothing that wouldn’t get us pulled over in a heartbeat, at least.

When we turn the corner, all five of us look at the women on the steps of Mrs. Miller’s house.

Mrs. Miller, still looking a little pale from her earlier shock, hugs the first one, and I can only guess that they are the three foretold granddaughters, here to sink their hooks into the four men I can now claim as my own.

“Looks like my competition’s arrived.”

That gets me four very different sounds of disapproval.

Dropping my head to Joshua’s shoulder, I don’t bother to hide my smile. It will be interesting to watch them try to draw my wolves away… if that’s what they want at all.

The only stop we make before we head across the bridge is at a coffee hut. The highschool girl working the window gives Thomas a wide smile and looks at the rest of us until her gaze settles on me, and then, her smile brightens.

She’s one of the girls from the football game bathroom. “Looks like you guys are headed off somewhere fun.”

I ignore the fact that she can’t read the mood and listen as Thomas rattles off a clearly memorized list of drinks, and he pauses, but he doesn’t look back at me before he adds a final drink to the list: London fog latte with a sprinkle of nutmeg.

It’s perfect, even if it’s not what I would have picked out of habit, so I don’t complain.

She disappears into the back and Thomas drops his head to the head rest looking at me in the rear-view mirror. “Is that okay? I should have asked, but I needed her to stop smiling at me.”

“It’s perfectly acceptable.”

“I can get her to make you something else.”

“Nope. Gimme the fog.”

She pops back up to the window to return Thomas’ card and deliver the first drink, and the guys stay silent as she goes through the routine four more times.

Before he rolls up his window, Thomas stuffs a small wad of cash into their tip jar and heads for the bridge that officially marks the northern edge of the town.

Tires hum across pavement as the green supports whizz by and I feel the same foul slither I did the last time I crossed thebarrier. But the smaller chunk of calcite I keep with me now means she won’t know that I’ve crossed her boundary.

“Uh… We have company.” Johnny looks at his lap.

The wolf doesn’t fit, exactly. It’s ghostly body passes through Johnny’s and the seat, as if it’s sitting on the floor. Thomas’s wolf is in the back among the baggage, but Joshua and Chase’s wolves have followed suit, claiming their human body’s space in the car.

“They’re on trial too.” I meet the ghostly eyes as Johnny’s wolf turns back to look at me over its shoulder. “If something goes wrong, they should take care of it before you even have to think about changing.”

Nineteen

A larger portionof the coven’s witchcraft lies in the aesthetic.

I warned them about that before we got to the tiny warehouse and descended the uneven steps down to catacombs that were only a few decades old… despite their appearance.

They’d been designed to wind a person round and round, but I knew the way through.

Like every member of the coven, I had learned it long ago.

But each step through the cavernous structure sets the guys a little bit further on edge. They might be growling if they weren’t wearing amber. It’s deadened the effects of the spells woven into these rocks… but not by much.

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