Page 34 of Marcus-stiltskin

“You rode bareback the entire way?” I ask him, impressed.

He shrugs it off. “Yeah, she’s a really good horse.” He rubs her neck before sliding carefully off her back. “She didn’t give me any trouble at all.”

Marcus snorts a soft laugh at that as Randy hops down from the horse and goes to rub her head. “Be good, Ramona,” he tells her, before heading over to Darla’s truck and getting in. They back out of the drive before we can say anything else.

“Is he a witch, too?”

I shake my head. “That’s my boss. He’s a werewolf.”

Marcus leads Ramona through the gate to the back yard and then we get back on the golf cart. Unlike our snail’s pace drive to the fire station earlier, Marcus drives us back out to the spot as fast as the cart will go, allowing me to think way too much as the wind keeps us from having any sort of conversation.

I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of where to get started on fixing the fence, but Marcus is like Jacqueline and this life seems to be second nature for him. He hands me a pair of work gloves and I hold wires and wrenches and wire cutters as he bends and splices wire back together to repair the section of fence the animals have been escaping through.

“How is witch school going?” he asks randomly.

“Okay, I guess. I’m learning to read cards and we start working on our Books of Shadows tomorrow, but–”

“But what?”

“Now that Freddie K. is sending me messages, Darla told me I have to go work with a different witch. She says she can’t help me anymore.”

“Huh. Are you going to miss witch school?”

I huff a laugh. “I made a little friend, a kid named Alyssa. I will miss her. She is very smart and seems very down trodden. The rest of the kids are just normal kids. You know–the ones whose whole world is homecoming and cheerleading. They have no idea what is waiting for them.”

He smiles up at me. “You sound almost wistful. I can’t imagine you wanting to go back to that time in your life. There’s no way in hell I’d go back.”

I laugh. “Absolutely not. I enjoy driving and having cake for dinner.”

“You have cake for dinner?”

It’s my turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “In all the time you’ve been divorced, you’ve never had cake for dinner?”

“Not for dinner, but I have had pumpkin pie for breakfast.”

“Isn’t it the best?”

“There are a few better things I can think of,” he says and meets my eyes, the fire back. I’m tempted to tell him to stop, even as heat fills my belly. This is not a game I like playing, but before I can open my mouth, the sky opens up and an ice cold deluge of the fattest raindrops I’ve ever experienced begins to fall over us.

“Damn, I wasn’t expecting it to be so cold,” Marcus mutters as we hurry to gather tools. “Do you want my shirt? We’ve got a long way back to the house.”

I shake my head as we load up the little golf cart and make our way back to the fire station, pressing the limits of the small vehicle’s old engine. The donkeys are waiting for us, braying in anger at the audacity of the bay door being closed. They must have also been caught off guard by the cold rain–the pace back and forth, huddled near the big door, waiting for it to open.

Marcus slams to a stop and hurries inside ahead of me. As he pulls on the chains, the donkeys duck under the metal door, shaking off like dogs and catching us both with the spray. Marcus laughs and moves closer to me, attempting to catch me in his own imitation of the donkey shake. It fails, as does mine, though he definitely gets hit in the face with my hair.

He locks everything up and then turns to me. “C’mon, you’ll freeze. I’ll get you some clothes you can change into.” I follow him up the stairs to the great room. Freddie K, for all of his usual nosiness, is enjoying the sound of the rain on the roof. He laysunder a blanket on the couch, in his dead pose, all four paws firmly in the air.

“How does he sleep like that?” I ask as we pass him, my teeth starting to chatter.

“I think it’s the only way he can get comfortable,” Marcus shrugs.

Marcus leads me past the couch to his bedroom, as I think wistfully of the hot water in the showers below.

He opens suitcases he has lined up against the wall and starts digging through neatly folded bundles of clothes before selecting a t-shirt and sweatpants. Turning to hand them to me, he stops and stares at me. “Are your teeth chattering? Your lips look blue.”

He doesn’t give me time to answer. He walks away before I can answer, pushing through a door and coming back out with a thick towel. With a flourish, like he’s wrapping me in a cape, he places the towel around me and drapes my hair over it. My teeth go on chattering as I start to shiver. He studies me for a moment and then pulls me close. “You need to get out of these wet clothes and dry off quickly,” he says, even as he pulls me tighter.

He’s just trying to keep me warm…right?

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