Page 79 of Elven Lies

Then he faced the blanket again and squatted in front of it. “Oh, look. They left their lunch behind. Don’t mind if I do, actually.”

He crouched over the blanket to pick at a bunch of grapes beside an overturned paper plate. “Ooh, Ilovethese.”

“We’re in a public park in the middle of the day,” she hissed, finally catching up to him. “What were youthinking?”

“You’re the one who needed proof.”

“That doesn’t mean using it on humans in broad daylight. Just give it back.”

“I didn’t even crank it all the way up,” he said, then grabbed an abandoned water bottle. “Butyou’retoo stubborn to—”

She leaped at him, meaning to snatch at the hex doll again. But Rowan stood at the last second and stepped neatly out of the way.

Rebecca stumbled forward and almost tripped over the picnic blanket catching around her shoes.

“Hold on. Check this out. It works on literally everyone.” Rowan jiggled the hex doll at her, then zeroed in his focus on another group of humans enjoying a stroll across the grass.

A family with three young children.

Was hetryingto bring the MJC down on both of them?

She tore away from the twisted picnic blanket, dropping the heavy silver briefcase, and charged Rowan head-on, colliding into his side with a growl. “Don’t you dare!”

He grunted and struggled to keep his footing, but then they were both on the ground, rolling and wrestling and scrambling while Rebecca tried to seize the doll from him and Rowan wouldn’t stop squirming away. His constant laughter only made it worse.

Finally, after a punch below his ribcage and an elbow across the side of his jaw, she gained the upper hand, pinning his arms beneath the pressure of her knees. Then she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt collar and loomed over him.

“You can’tdothis,” she hissed.

His laughter died into a soft chuckle as he grinned up at her through heavy breathing, his hazel eyes glinting. “Only becauseyouwon’t let me get that far.”

“Mommy? What are these grownups doing?”

Rebecca looked up to find a child pointing shamelessly at her and Rowan.

The mother tugged on the little boy’s hand. “Don’t point. It’s rude. And that’s none of our business.”

The man beside her, likely the father, tugged the other two children along with him. Unlike his wife, though, he glared disapprovingly at Rebecca practically sitting on Rowan beside a rumpled picnic blanket and spilled snacks.

Though he couldn’t move his arm, Rowan still lifted his hand to wiggle his fingers in a friendly wave. “Lovely afternoon, don’t you think?”

“There arekidshere,” the man hissed. “Get a room.”

The family hurried away, and Rowan exploded into another round of dangerous, carefree laughter.

As much as she wanted to teach him the kind of lesson he was far less likely to forget, Rebecca couldn’t do a thing to him out here in the open. There were so many civilians around, magical and human, or she would have already.

Instead, she shook him by his shirt collar with a growl, then released him. His head thumped back onto the grass, but she still held him down with one hand and yanked the hex doll from his grasp with the other. Then she stood to leave him in the grass, pausing only to snatch up the silver briefcase from Aldous’s stash. “You arereallypushing it.”

“Why? Because we could’ve been seen, or because I’m right?” Rowan pushed himself up to sit in the grass, then found his discarded grapes and popped him more into his mouth. “Not that those are mutually exclusive.”

She wanted to scream at him, to list all the ways he’d made her job harder than necessary, plus all the ways he’d deliberately disobeyed her or acted against the plan in the last twenty-four hours. That list was quickly piling up.

Her aching fingers reminded her how tightly she clenched the hex doll, so she shoved it into her pocket and stormed back toward the sidewalk.

Her fingers brushed against the cool, smooth surface of the Mindstone Maxwell had given her, filling her thoughts with even more possibilities.

If she sounded the alarm with this thing, the shifter would be here in minutes. She was certain of it. The thought of him appearing at her side to muscle Rowan back into shape for her tempted her rage, but it was only a fantasy.

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