Page 68 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part One

I wasn’t sure how I’d keep two shifters properly fed. The extra money I’d made working at the estate would vanish quickly if I had to buy enough protein to keep us all satiated. I wouldn’t worry about it now, but I’d have to deal with it soon. First, though, I wanted to make sure Ricky was all right.

“How’s it going in here? Have the cats voted to kick any of us out yet?” Leo asked as he came inside after unloading the compost into my garden. I hadn’t even thought about the motherlode of organic material we’d technically stolen until America had asked if we wanted a car that could get it back to my place. While I’d been in a pretty foul mood, even the grumpiest of grumps wouldn’t have me turning down what amounted to two-thousand-dollars’ worth of black gold soil. Man, thefoodI was going to make from that!

I was looking forward to getting my hands dirty again. It felt like an age since I’d tended to my garden, and now I was behind. The tomatoes needed to be planted outside, then two weeks later, all my gourds and melons, followed finally by my peppers.

“Not yet,” I answered. “But we’re hanging by a thread. They’re not opposed to a little catnip bribery.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

We shared a laugh, then the conversation went on rather organically. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Ricky was essentially a complete stranger to me, but he and Leo wentwayback. I was about as close to a third wheel as I could be without it being a romantic situation, yet I didn’t feel that way. It was nice to watch them smile and reminisce, or occasionally brainstorm something neither of them could remember.

I found it curious the warlocks had chosen to make Leo’s punishment so much worse than everyone else’s when they’d intended him to stay in his wolf form forever, but it was probably a failsafe in case the spell somehow went wrong or was broken.

Clever bastards. Life was much easier when the bad guys lacked foresight.

“Have you found any others besides me?”

I had been anticipating the question, but it still felt like it came out of nowhere.

Leo and I both froze, the pleasant atmosphere fading as Ricky studied our faces.

“No,” Leo said slowly. “Just you. You’re the only one I could remember being taken.”

“Man, they really did a number on your memories, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, they wanted to make sure I was miserable and alone even if I somehow ever got my human form back.”

“Vindictive sons of bitches, ain’t they? With three of them down, I’m sure they’re cooking up some sort of revenge scheme. Hopefully, they won’t be able to trace this latest thing back to us. Might get harder as we find more of us, depending on what they did with the others.”

“Would you say that they’re awizat revenge?” I interjected, trying to lighten the mood.

Ricky gave me a quizzical sort of expression. “I don’t follow.”

Oh, boy. My face heated, and not in a good way. “Uh, you know, just trying to make a play on words. Wiz,wizard.You get it.”

It was such a little thing, and yet it made me want to sink into the floor. There was nothing like a failed joke to get me inside my head.

“Oh, I do get it, but they’re not wizards. They’re warlocks.”

I frowned. “Isn’t a warlock just a male witch?”

Ricky nearly choked on his soup, which made me feel embarrassed all over again. Surely that couldn’t be that ridiculous of a thing to assume.

He shook his head. “Not at all. Warlocks are any type of magic user that has made a specific pact with either a demon, an ancestral spirit, or some sort of celestial power from a different age, or even a different reality. A lot of them posture around like gods, but mostly they’re just metaphysical forces. Think of them kind of like magical sugar babies. They give their soul in a pact with whoever their patron is, and then they get powers untold on top of their natural abilities.”

“Oh,” I murmured, mind reeling a bit. “So, not just male witches.”

“No, definitely not just male witches.”

“Wish we knew which deities were fueling this whole clan,” Leo groused, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Maybe it would get us some sort of advantage. Or maybe we could find other warlocks who are enemies of their patron. Wouldn’t that be convenient?”

Ricky’s spoon splashed down into his soup.

“Hey, are you all right?” Leo asked with concern.

The look of shock on Ricky’s face was pretty stark, and all the color had drained from his cheeks.

“I just remembered something,” he gasped.

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