Page 12 of Frayed Owner

I snorted. “You should have seen how they handled me and showed up demanding gobs of money promising they’d find me a familiar andfix mewith their vast selection. It was worse than every movie with cliché gross used car salesman. That’s my issue. They’ve perverted something sacred—the top-tier families always do.”

“I thought it was just at the orphanage,” he whispered as he got back to work. “Because we were vulnerable. I’ve heard from others that it was a wholesome experience. How humans talk about going to see Santa at the mall with their parents.”

“Yeah, it can be like that too. There are two different places like that in the magical mall where Familiar Treasures is. They’re a bit too pushy from what Woodchuck tells me, and they’re not always familiars they try to match but animals. They use their status to shut down any criticism or negative feedback, so it pisses me off.”

“Wow, yeah, that’s totally valid.” He moved us so he could kiss my cheek. “Thanks for explaining. I’m glad I know.”

“I’m always here to share the dirty secrets of this world and scare you with the underbelly of darkness people don’t know about,” I drawled, feeling bad for always bursting their bubbles. Then again, Sergey and Wyatt were pretty well in the know given their circumstances. Winter wasn’t naïve either.

Kelton was the one that I always felt like I was pulling back the curtain with.

“There was a man who came with familiars and I found out later he wasn’t with one of the companies. They were upset to see him and—I don’t know. I got the feeling the official people wanted to block him. It was shady. He was shady,” Winter told me, his voice sounding more like the scared kid he’d been instead of the huge man he was now. “He kept coming back to check on me and others he found familiars for.

“Even after I left the orphanage. He came to find me last year and reminded me that I owed him because he’d given me my familiar. I told him to pound sand basically. The orphanage handled all of that, but he said they never paid him and he could take Teddy back. Legally. I checked and he can’t, but it was all really unsettling, and I keep trying to think of what to do.”

“What else?” I hedged.

“He asked me if I was working on anything to publish and what I was planning on doing for my master’s thesis. It was very—like he owned me.” He let out an awkward, scared chuckle. “It’s why I have an aversion to people with mustaches. Not facial hair but mustaches. Anytime I see a man with one, I think of his weird-ass silver mustache.”

“What did you say?” I asked, my whole body going cold.

“The guy has a weird silver mustache. The warlock,” he muttered, turning my head to get a spot right above my neck. “His hair is so light blond that it looks silver and so does his facial hair. He’s really creepy. His eyes are yellow too. They’re really piercing. They remind me of a predator bird who watches for the opportunity to pounce.”

“Watching for hurt prey,” I whispered.

“Yeah, exactly. That’sexactlywhat Danny said when he met him when he came to campus,” Winter agreed.

I pulled away too fast, sloshing water onto the floor and jumping out of the tub. I barely had enough room in my brain to grab a clip on my way out the door, ignoring Winter yelling after me. Flipping up my hair and forgetting spa night, I raced to where I remembered Clare was being a bum in the living room.

Her eyes went wide when she saw me. “What the—”

“If I told you creepy guy with a silver mustache and yellow beady eyes, who do you immediately think of?”

Sheinstantlyreplied. “The right hand of the head of the Hughes family.” She shivered. “That guy is a freak. He would always make comments about me and Jean when Father stepped out of the room and the men we’d marry being so lucky and he was jealous of them. Like when we were under ten and then stopped when we got older. Gross.”

“That is a whole other reason to be horrified,” I mumbled, but stayed focused. “Do you know how to find a picture of him?”

She started to shake her head but then reached over to the coffee table and nodded. “Yeah, he was at an event I put together for a charity. Father put me on the committee because he thought it would up my value and get me better offers.” She swallowed loudly and then shook her head as if she was disappointed in herself.

Yeah, I understood that one. We’d let way too much go to survive that house and family. Maybe for her that she’d left her blinders on that she didn’t see how she was mistreated as badly as she’d thought?

I wasn’t really sure, but I accepted it was her pain to work through and I could just be supportive without being intrusive.

“Bevin, what is going on?” Winter asked as he caught up with me.

“Yeah, I’d like to know the same,” a man drawled from my right.

I turned to see Kelton standing off to the side with his brother Kevin and a few others. “We were having a spa night.” I shrugged. What did that really matter? Then I remembered I probably looked crazy and shrugged it off.

“Here,” Clare said and offered me her tablet.

“Thanks,” I muttered, grabbing it and holding it up to Winter after I enlarged the picture to focus on who I wanted. “Is this the man?”

Fear filled his eyes and he took a step back out of instinct. “Yes. You know him? He wouldn’t ever tell me his name.”

“Yeah, I just bet,” I mumbled.

“What’s going on, Bevin?” Clare asked.

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