Page 63 of Shadows of the Soul

“He dumped me. I’m single once more. But not available,” I added to dispel any thoughts of her sorting me out with a rebound hook up.

“Oh, Cora.” Her hands gripped my shoulders, and she spun me around to face her. “He’s an ass. If he doesn’t understand what he has right in front of him, then he’s not worth your time.”

I turned and finished making the two bowls of breakfast before handing one to Rebecca and sitting down opposite her at the dining table.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, I have a long list of shit to do, and none of it involves talking about Hudson Abbot and his priorities.”

“What’s first?” Rebecca asked. I knew I liked her for a reason.

“Two things, but first, is anyone else awake in the house?”

She tilted her head. “The couple in the room opposite mine, but they are otherwise occupied.”

“Excellent. For the first thing, you’ll need to liaise with Sebastian.”

“Okay, what for?”

I scooped up the last of my fruit. “Aunt Liz’s impromptu mission to run interference between you and your parents at The Order? It didn’t happen.”

Her brows dipped. “They didn’t come?”

I shook my head and collected our dishes before depositing them in the sink. “No, it didn’t happen at all. There were no negotiations. I need you two to work together to figure out where my aunt went and what she did.”

“Because she’s acting weird,” Rebecca concluded. “What if she’s possessed?”

“Impossible. My wards wouldn’t let her in.”

Rebecca tilted her head. “What’s the second thing?”

“For that, I need a copy of the tenant agreement for the stables.”

She blinked. “You’re booting his ass out?”

“Damn right. It’s time to clean house.”

***

Maggie found me in my office some hours later pouring over the tenancy agreement with a Google search open on how to evict tenants.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Figuring out if hundreds of shifters traipsing over my lawn counts as antisocial behavior,” I muttered while skimming the passage in question. Failing that, I had to give a two-month eviction notice. Maybe I could take a sabbatical in the meantime? My aunts were scattered across the US—I could do a tour and return the day after he left. In the meantime, I had to hope the portal swallowed nothing.

“Fuck.” I shoved back from the desk and ran a hand through my hair, tugging the end of my ponytail in frustration.

Maggie inched closer, clutching a glass of iced tea. “Did you take some to the doc?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Breakfast too. Would you like anything else? A cake? A cookie? I baked lemon, your favorite.”

I eyeballed her. “You know.”

She grimaced and shrugged her shoulders. “Rebecca mentioned it.”

I tipped my head back and huffed. “Of course she did.”

“She says she’ll be down soon with an update on her task. The nature of which, she didn’t tell me.”

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