Page 12 of Enspelled

“Do you have a cell phone here?” he asks.

I blink in surprise. “What?”

“It might be a good idea for us to send a message to your friend and let them know what we’re doing.”

“Top bedside drawer,” I tell him, watching as he stretches over and pulls out my cell phone from the drawer. “And what do you mean ‘we’?”

He taps a quick message before placing the cell phone beside him and re-settling with his arms folded and eyes closed. “While you’re hunting out a spell, you’re going to tell me about the people in this town. Because it sounds like there’s a mystery here.”

“What makes you think you can solve it?”

“I’m not from around here. I don’t have any biases, friends, or enemies, which makes me the ideal person to see who has the most to gain by painting a target on your friend’s back. Wouldn’t you say?”

I want to argue, but I can’t—because he’s right. So I observe him for the next several seconds in silence. “You’re not going to fall asleep on my bed, are you?”

He cracks one eye open. “You asking because I’m a wolf?”

Snorting, I lower my gaze to the grimoire. “No, because you’re a guy. I might be twenty-one, but that doesn’t mean my mom is going to be cool with finding a guy sleeping in her daughter's bed.”

“So you’ve brought guys up here before?”

No, I’m the obedient daughter who always does what she’s told.

Instead of responding, I rest my fingers on the grimoire latch and close my eyes, murmuring an incantation to unlock it. The clasp falls open, and I turn to the first page. “What do you want to know about the town?”

“Start with the wolves.”

“Why the wolves?”

“Anything unusual with them, I can spot. If we can rule out the wolves, I’d say that’s a large part of the town we don’t have to go looking for an enemy.”

This guy is no dumb drifter, no matter how wide his stupid grin.

As I flick through the pages to start my search for a spell that will help Briar, I start talking.

4

BRIAR

Keane hangs up Bodie’s black cell phone without a word. I’d almost forgotten he even had it until it vibrated just as Keane was parking his truck outside Aunt Mel’s house, and he pulled it from the center console.

Which reminds me, I still have to ask him why he crushed his phone when he heard about a houseful of dead bodies in Texas. Was he responsible? Or did he not want the cops to use it to track him to Madden Grove?

“Who was it?” I ask when I’ve given up waiting for him to clue me in on what’s going on.

“Bodie. Says he and Sera have Layla Markham’s grimoire, and to stay away if we were thinking of heading over there. Someone is home.”

I gape at him in disbelief, hoping I just heard him wrong. “What?”

He shoots a glance over at me before turning the engine off and then reaching for his door. “They have the grimoire.”

I force myself to keep meeting his eyes when everything in me wants to bury my face in my shirt and spend the next five years trying to forget how I crawled into his lap.

My face flames as I remember being a wolf one minute, and the next I’m naked in Keane’s lap with no idea how I got there. “For them to have it means they would have had to go to Layla Markham’s house.”

Keane shoves his car door open and climbs out. I do the same.

“Makes sense. We should wait a while before going over there.”

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