Page 28 of Wolf Tamer

“I know. I recognize it.” I turn the thing over, inspecting every surface, trying to decide how I feel about it. “I never expected to see it again.”

“So—”

“It’s a book of spells, yeah,” I say as I cut him off. “But it’s one of the first spellbooks every coven child gets before getting serious with their magical education. I actually had one once upon a time, in what feels like a different life. I tossed it into a fire a long time ago.”

A jittery sort of excited energy starts in my stomach and worms its way higher, until a dark smile fills my face.

“Why?” Reid presses.

I shake my head and say, “There are too many reasons to count and a whole lot of messed-up baggage from my childhood.”

Things I don’t want to get into now, with him, because we have other messed-up things from our childhoods to deal with.

Life is a bitch.

“Let’s just say, I know what this book is. but I have no clue how to use what’s written inside. I’m not exactly proficient with my witch powers. It’s been years since I practiced them at all,” I reply instead. “But at least this will give me a little bit of an edge I didn’t have before.”

Do I tell him about what happened in the cell? About the tiny spark for something I hadn’t expected and what it really meant for me? A hazy memory of yesterday resurfaces, but I can’t make sense of it.

I hesitate.

Because I haven’t been able to replicate it since, not even to save myself. I barely have enough juice left in me to draw on my invisibility anymore.

We got lucky.

I’m not generally lucky these days.

“Well, I found something in the book. While you were unconscious, I decided to do a little light reading, and it turns out…” Reid takes the book back from me and flips to a page he dog-eared. “There’s a spell that will make you untouchable to pain. I thought it might help with the, uh—”

“The bending over and whipping me,” I fill in for him.

Wincing, he looks down at his bare feet.

“That really isn’t the issue. You want me to try this spell.”

“I do. I think it’s our best option for you to avoid whatever it is I’ll have to do.”

I snarl at his repentant expression. “Christ, Reid, you make it sound like you’re going to flay the skin off my body.”

Except neither one of us is laughing.

“The spell will make you impervious to pain,” he continues. “But it only lasts sixty seconds.”

I yank the spellbook out of his hands, like we’re playing some kind of weird game of tug of war, before glancing down at what the spell entails.

And I’m not sure I can do it.

ChapterTen

Reid

Watching Tasha read through the spell has my stomach dropping and the rest of me going ice cold. She doesn’t look confident. If anything, she looks paler. Sicker.

She’s worried.

And I know that whenshe’sworried, that means disaster for us.

This is a woman who can take care of herself in almost any situation she comes across, a hired killer who, up until recently, had been damn good at her job. The type of woman who takes life by the horns and bends it to her will.

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