Page 26 of Soul Bound

Winnie nervously bites at her thumbnail again, but this time I don’t stop her. She’s full of nervous energy and needs the outlet. She keeps her two-toned eyes glued to Esme like she’s still trying to process the fact they’re related by blood. While my family drives me crazy, I can’t imagine my life without them. I would give my life to protect any of them and I feel bad for Winslow. She’s never had someone in her corner like that. She hasn’t had anyone to protect her. At the first sight of her scars, my wolf has already decided we weren’t going to allow any more harm to come to Winslow, so whether she likes it or not, I have her back.

“Ah, here it is!” Esme claps her hands together in excitement. She does a quick scan of the writing on the yellowing page of the old book. “Oh no, this won’t work. It’s a fairly straightforward spell, but it requires the blood of the missing person for the spell. And if you had access to Thalia’s baby’s blood, you wouldn’t need the tracking spell. Damn.”

We had brought Esme up to speed on Thalia and her missing baby. I had told her as quickly as possible about how I had found Thalia when we rescued Pruitt, not wanting to get into specific detail because as much as I don’t want it to, talking about it still makes my chest ache. Winslow and I told her about the promise we had each made to Thalia, that we would find her baby, and Esme didn’t ask further questions, instead, she jumped into trying to locate the right spell.

“Fuck,” I growl, balling my hands into fists in frustration. “How the hell are we supposed to find a three-month-old infant without the tracking spell? She could be in the fuckingNorth Polefor all we know.”

“That seems unlikely.” Winslow rolls her eyes at my dramatics.

“She could be anywhere in the entire world. We can’t search every inch of the globe, Arizona. This is hopeless without a place to start looking.”

“Don’t give up hope yet, Ranger. I’m going to keep looking for different spells. I’ll reach out to my different contacts and see if anyone knows of a spell that doesn’t require blood.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Winnie asks Esme.

The high priestess shakes her head. “No dear. I can’t do much either until I talk to my contacts. You should probably head home, for the time being, there’s no point in sitting around my shop while I make phone calls.”

I hate feeling useless, and right now I feel about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. And I hate it.

9

Winslow

Ranger lets me sit in the front seat this time.Yay for small victories?

Although, I’m getting the impression he only does it because he feels bad for me after I told him about the pool accident. I want to laugh at that because the pool thing isn’t even the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me. Sometimes, dying is peaceful and easy, I know when I finally let go in the pool it was calm and warm. The events that followed years later, however, werenot. Drowning doesn’t haunt me in my dreams, like the way the other thing does. I can barely close my eyes at night without seeing that evil woman’s face staring down at me while my wrist and ankles are pinned to the bed.

Esme’s words float in my head as we drive away from her shop. She had wrapped me in another tight embrace before we left and whispered in my ear,“You don’t have to tell me everything if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you ever want to talk about what happened.”My throat had felt tight when I nodded my head at her in response, not trusting myself to speak.

“I’m starving,” Ranger’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “You hungry?”

I shrug. “Sure.”

I don’t have much of an appetite on a good day, but after the shitload of information that had been dumped on me, I’m even less inclined to eat. I need time to process all of this and I would much rather do it in the comfort and solitude of my motel room, but I don’t see that happening. I’m tired and don’t want to fight, so I don’t even bother asking. I just sit quietly in my seat, looking at the cute little storefronts we pass driving down Main Street.

I grew up in the suburbs of Rhode Island and when I left home at seventeen, I lived in New York. I’ve never spent time in a small town like the one Ranger and his family live in. It has a rustic mountain town vibe that I adore. I’m not what you would call‘outdoorsy’,but the trees are lush and green and the lake the town sits on is picturesque. I wouldn’t mind spending time in a quiet, peaceful place like this. Added bonus? My parents would never think to look for me somewhere like this.

Which reminds me…

“I need to get my hands on a computer,” I tell Ranger as we pull into a parking lot.

“Why?” he asks, turning off the engine of his black4Runner.

I unbuckle my seatbelt. “I need to contact someone and the only way I can do it is by logging into this online message board. He’s paranoid, so he doesn’t own a phone or I would call him.”

“We can go buy you one.” Ranger shrugs, sliding out of the car as he does.

I follow suit, my short legs working hard to keep up with his long strides. “I just need to borrow one, I don’t have the money right now for one,” After I talk to my friend, money won’t be an issue, but as of right now I only have a couple hundred dollars to my name. And technically it isn’t evenmymoney since I stole it from doctor Bev.

“It’s fine.” He shrugs off my comment while opening the door for me. I finally pay attention to where he had brought me and find that we are at a retro diner. Stepping through the door is like stepping back in time. Nothing looks like it’s been changed since the fifties, from the red vinyl booths to the checkered flooring and the glowing jukebox in the corner, it all looks original.

Ranger waves at a plump waitress in a teal uniform with white piping and a frilly apron around her waist. “Hi honey! Your booth is open, I’ll be over in a second to grab you and your friend’s orders,” she tells him as she fills a gentleman’s coffee cup.

“Your booth?” I raise a brow at him while he leads me toward an empty booth in the back. “Do you come here often?”

“I used to spend a lot of time here in high school, it was the local hangout for my friends and me. I kept coming back when I started college, I would hang out here and do my homework,” he explains as he slides into the booth.

I sit on the opposite side of him, still glancing around the diner. “It’s cute in here. I can see why you would want to spend time here.”

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