Page 39 of Ensnared
But she’s focused on the tree line, barking like mad. I squint, trying to see what got her so upset. A shadow moves between the trees, tall enough to be a man, but somehow bulkier.
Oh shit.
“Come!” I yell at the dog. “Come!”
For a moment, I think she might not obey me. I’ve trained her, extensively, but some dormant part of her tiny brain still thinks she’s a predator large enough to match whatever is hiding in the woods.
She barks once more, then zooms up the porch steps and into my arms. I scoop her up so she can’t escape and back away from the railing.
“Is it a bear?” I whisper into her fluffy ear. “Is that what you saw?”
A twig snaps in the forest, and a bird flutters up, cawing in alarm. It startles me, and I no longer care whether it was a bear, a deer, or something else. It got close enough to the cabin that it must have passed the electric fence that stretches all around the village, and that freaks me out. Aiden had warned me this might happen, that bears are vicious predators. And I’ve completely forgotten about the can of bear spray that he ordered me to wear.
Luckily, we get to escape into the cabin this time. I close and lock the door behind us before I’m comfortable with putting Princess Penny on the floor. She sniffs around my feet, then trots to her water bowl and drinks, the outside danger forgotten.
But I’m not so easily calmed. What if we’d been farther away from the cabin when that animal crossed our path? I’d become complacent and have begun letting Princess Penny off her leash near my cabin and the Lodge. She’s not very fast, but if she darted into the undergrowth, she could get hurt before I could catch up with her.
I try to reach for my phone to type out a message to Jack about this, then remember I don’t have one. With raw nerves, I try to get back into my flow state, but it’s not working. I’ve lost the magic for today, and I need Aiden’s permission to buy equipment anyway. This means I’ll have to have an actual conversation with him, which is something I’m not looking forward to. Really. The less time I spend in his company, the better.
Instead, I distract myself with rearranging all my belongings. I’ve spoken with Jack about moving in with him, though now I suppose Ty will also be spending most of his nights with us. We might need a bigger room—or at least a larger bed. There are things I could leave here at the cabin over the winter because I won’t need them at all, like my pretty teal Adidas high-tops and too-thin jacket. I’ll be taking my new winter gear with me, of course, everything that will keep me warm over the dreaded Alaskan winter.
It scares me a little, this wilderness that encroaches on the village. Not just the beasts but the sheer scale of the uninhabited land surrounding us. I know there are communities up and down the coast, as well as inland of us, but I could start out walking in one direction and not come across another human for days.
I love it here, but now that nature is showing its teeth, I’m wondering whether I’m made to survive the conditions. The village is full of dragons, for gods’ sake, and they’re pretty damn resilient. I’m a witch, though, so I’m no stronger than a human, physically, unless I can learn to cast some sort of defense spell or a bubble of warmth around myself.
This really brings home the realization that I need to speak to Aiden and force him to give me phone privileges. I need the grimoires, at least the ones containing the most basic spells, so I can then learn to cobble together more complex workings like any other witch. Again, the sense of unfairness washes over me—I should already know all this. Iwouldknow all this if my family ever took the time and effort to look past my failings to the underlying magic that I’d somehow pushed deep inside me.
Ugh. I shake off the feeling of unease. It’s no use lamenting the past, but I do need to take the steps that will ensure my future as a witch is not as terrible. Maybe Aiden would allow me to meet with Alice in Anchorage. She could teach me the basic spells there.
If she wanted to come, that is. Maybe she won’t want to leave San Diego and her boys, which is totally understandable. Or maybe the family won’t let her go—if they found out I was trying to teach myself magic, they might come in force to stop me.
That would be a catastrophe for the sea dragon village that has taken me in.
No, it will be better to just ask her to send over a couple of tomes, the ones I painstakingly copied by hand as punishment for being unable to do it by magic. Spell after spell, I’d written with ink and quill, under the watchful eye of my grandmother. I remember the rage that sloshed inside me while I carefully tapped off excess drops of ink and tried not to smudge the writing with my hand. Any mistakes I made, I had to correct by writing out the entire spell again. None of those spells stuck inside my head, even though I’d read them over and over. I might have suppressed them out of self-preservation then, but I regret that now. If I can recall them, I won’t have to let Alice in on the secret that I’m practicing magic again.
I grab a bowl of cereal because I haven’t had a proper lunch and there’s nothing in my fridge but milk and a single egg. Ty’s cooking is much better than anything I can whip up for myself, and I’m more than glad to eat at the Lodge, especially now that we’ve overcome our differences. But I’d forgotten about the time during my workflow. I’m resorting to Cheerios so my stomach won’t growl on whatever date Ty is taking Jack and me.
A knock breaks my train of thought. At the door, I peer through the little glass pane. Jack’s face is right outside. I fling the door open, happy to see another friendly face after that scare with the animal in the woods.
“Hey.” I give him a one-armed hug, holding my cereal bowl away from him so milk doesn’t splash over us.
Ty appears from behind him, kissing me on the mouth. “We waited for you at the cabin.”
“Sorry, time got away from me. Besides,” I add, “I didn’t want to go out without you.”
Jack raises his eyebrows. “Anything wrong?”
I slurp up the last of the cereal. “I think I saw a bear in the trees over there.” I point toward the bushes where I noticed the shadow. “Princess Penny smelled it, and I thought it would be better to, you know, wait for someone who has bear experience.”
“You could have called one of us,” Ty says. “Or Aiden.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I could, if I had a phone.”
“Oh shit,” he says. “Uh. We’ll tell Aiden to get you a walkie-talkie or something.”
“Or a phone,” I say, unimpressed.
Jack winces. “Yeah, he’ll have to be the one to give you permission for that.”
