Page 41 of It All Started with a Bite

Bo peeked at me worriedly from between his toes.

I could feel a sheen of sweat building on my forehead.

Samuel frowned at me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Mindy muttered. “You don’t look so good.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten. When I opened them, everyone was staring. There were no two ways around this. I was going to have to confess.

“My, er, best friend Ellie was the idiot employee who sold that skull,” I admitted in a small voice. “In her defense, she had no idea it was a cursed artifact.”

Samuel stared. “Ellie works at Mystical Moments?”

It was hard to tell if his tone held horror or disgust.

“She used to. The owner fired her after that incident.”

Samuel rubbed his temples. It was a moment before he spoke.

“We believe the teenager in question was working for someone else. Someone who knew exactly what the artifact was.”

Didi drummed her fingers on the table. “That thing might be on its way to a private auction house by now.”

“No.” Samuel’s pupils flashed amber behind his glasses. “It’s still in Amberford. Clarissa Owens, the owner of the shop, put a tracking spell on it. Although something is interfering with her ability to pinpoint its exact location, she’s convinced it hasn’t left town.”

My stomach sank. Not only did my best friend accidentally sell a magical artifact, she might have put the entire Amberford supernatural community I now belonged to in mortal danger.

“So we need to track down this skull before it falls into the wrong hands?” I asked stiffly.

A tentacle emerged from behind the cactus. “Um, technically it’s already in the wrong hands.”

“Thank you, Nigel,” Samuel muttered.

Bo and I jumped when a horrifying screech echoed from the depths of the building and rattled the windows. I clutched my chest.

It sounded like Charlene.

“Uh-oh,” Janet said, pale-faced. “That was a DEFCON 3 warning.”

Samuel muttered something under his breath and began rubbing his temples harder.

Didi licked her lips. “We still had her on DEFCON 3?”

Mindy flickered and faded. “I’m outta here. Catch me up later!”

The potted cactus near the window suddenly looked lonely, the boogeyman having also made himself scarce.

“What are you talking about?” I said once my heartbeat had slowed down.

The sound of heels clicking on the hardwood floor outside interrupted us. Samuel and my new coworkers visibly tensed, their unblinking stares following the approaching footsteps through the wall. Bo shuffled behind my chair.

A familiar figure opened the conference room door and swept inside in a cloud of respectability andChanel No. 5, a white cat perched regally in her arms.

“There you all are,” Victoria said. She was tucking away two sets of matching rose-gold noise-canceling headphones into her handbag. “And DEFCON 3, really?” she told Samuel sourly. “There are better ways to make use of your receptionist.”

Pearl sneered.

The temperature dropped by several degrees. Hawthorne & Associates’s top management looked about as pleased at seeing the pack matriarch as they would an inquisition.

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