Page 11 of Ensnared
“Skye? What we did on the beach? With the full moon and all?”
As soon as he says the words, another puzzle piece is loosened from the fog in my head. Skye, sitting on the beach, a fire burning beside her. She looked like a goddess in the moonlight, and we fell on her like hungry beasts.
“Oh yeah, that was hot.” I grin at him. “Where is she? We could have a repeat of that. Just, you know, in a bed, maybe.”
There’s a part of me that wants to go find her, breakfast be damned. But I still don’t understand what he’s saying about the IV and the three days, so I stay put.
Ty’s expression darkens. My smile fades, because this isn’t the face of a happy man who’d just had the hottest sex of his life.
“Talk to me, man. Is Skye okay? Did anything happen to her?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. She’s a witch.”
Holy fuck. My hackles rise, and a deep instinct of fear flares inside my gut. Witches exist, we all know that, but they’re a distant threat we don’t talk about a lot. As kids, parents threatened that a witch would come for us if we didn’t make our beds or eat our roe or whatever, but I’d never heard of anyone actually meeting a real-life witch.
“Nah,” I say. “She can’t be.”
He doesn’t crack a smile, though. “You climaxed, and she erupted in flames. Then you passed out for three days. We couldn’t wake you. She did something to you. Sucked up your energy or whatever the fuck witches do.”
I search for signs that this is just a bad joke. Maybe he’s filming me, and Maya will jump from behind the door any second now, yelling, ‘Ha, got you, sucker!’ It’s exactly what my sister would do to make fun of me. But she doesn’t. And Ty’s not smiling, either.
“Flames?” I repeat dumbly, because that’s what my brain snags on.
“Yeah. They were white and huge.”
Crazy. This is completely and absolutely crazy.
“But…she’sSkye,” I try to explain helplessly. “She’s a computer programmer.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Aiden knew she was a witch before inviting her here.”
“He what?”
Ty gets up and strides to the door. He throws it open and bellows down the corridor, “Aiden? Jack woke up. Get your ass up here.” He turns to me and adds, “He can explain himself.”
Fat raindrops pelt down on the roof above my room. Fall has come, and the first freeze is coming up fast. I wonder whether Skye is ready for the Alaskan winter. Then running footsteps announce our friend’s arrival. A moment later, I’m enveloped in a tight hug, and Aiden exhales against my neck.
“Oh gods, I’m happy to see you awake.”
I pat his back, and he releases me. I laugh nervously. “I’m fine.”
Aiden’s face is mottled with bruises, and I squint, searching my broken memory to work out where his injuries came from.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I’m fine. But Ty told me about Skye. That she’s…”
“A witch, yeah.”
Aiden blows out a breath and sits beside me. Ty, who is now leaning on the wall opposite the bed, gives me a look that says, ‘Told you.’
I focus on Aiden instead. “Want to tell me what happened?”
He clasps his hands and leans his elbows on his knees. “She’s really a witch. And I invited her here so she could put up a protection barrier like the kind the Norwegian clan has around their island.” His foot taps on the floor, a nervous gesture that’s his tell. “I didn’t think she’d be this…complicated.”
I process that for a minute. “So you mean you let us both get involved with her without telling us what she is?”
It’s hard to wrap my head around this. I knew Aiden was hiding secrets, but not something of this magnitude. If the villagers found out…
