Promise the Moon (Lorimar Pack Book 1) Page 12

  Usually that was the question I got asked. It felt weird returning the favor.

  “I don’t have a scent memory the way you do. If I hadn’t been using so much magic the last few days, I doubt I would have picked up on it.” He stuck out one hand and wobbled it back and forth. “So that’s a maybe?”

  “I’ll take it.” After this we could stop by Panda and let him get a sniff of that area. The handwritten signs linked the sites, but knowing if we were up against one fae or many would be handy. “Are you picking up on anything else?”

  His lips parted on a response, and then he was turning on his heel and walking toward me looking puzzled. I caught him by the shoulders, and a small shake snapped him back to attention.

  “You okay?” I kept my hand on his arm until I was sure he was steady.

  “I didn’t expect it to hit me that hard. Even after you warned me…” He stepped out of my grasp and faced the lot. “Most times awareness gives you an edge. Spells have a more difficult time sticking to you if you’re aware they’re there.”

  “That makes sense.” It was tougher fooling someone when they expected the trick. “I wasn’t strong enough to break out of the repetitive loop. I was aware I was acting under the influence, but that didn’t stop me from doing what I was told.”

  A glimmer of anticipation flushed his cheeks. “This should be fun.”

  “Do you think you can counteract it?” What I really wanted to know was, “Can you remove it? It’s got to be protecting something, right? Why else shoo people away from an empty parking lot?”

  “Have you considered it might be…?” He left the thought hanging.

  “I want to believe that if Mr. O was in there, I would have smelled him by now.” My gut curdled. “He’s been missing for days.”

  Enzo didn’t have a response to that, and even if he had, I doubt I would have wanted to hear it.

  “I have supplies in my car,” he said at last. “I didn’t want to haul the whole case down here until I had a better idea of what we’re up against.” He glanced around. “Do you think Mrs. O’Malley would mind if I parked back here?”

  “She’ll vouch for us if anyone asks.” Though most folks didn’t enforce employee-only parking with the tenacity of Joann. “I’ll hang out here if it’s all the same to you.” I wiggled my fingers. “You can do that invisible thing you do, right?”

  His answer was to disappear into thin air.

  A chill swept over me at the reminder of his power. “I guess that’s a yes.”

  Too much coming and going from an area restricted from the public put us at risk of drawing attention we didn’t want if we were going to get to the bottom of this glamour. Creepy or not, playing invisible man was the way to go.

  “I’ll make it quick,” a tinny voice promised from the general area where Enzo had been standing.

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Footsteps crunched on gravel, betraying his location. Minutes later his shoes scuffed the sidewalk. My ears strained until the silence of the parking lot rushed in to fill the void. Only then did the wolf in me relax. Had he been upwind, she could have scented him. As it was, the predator in my middle wasn’t thrilled with having a dangerous ally we couldn’t see in such close proximity.

  Behind me, the deep bass honk of a truck horn blasted. I startled and spun toward the road, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach into the soles of my feet, which itched to turn and run. Toward or away from the vehicle and its driver, I wasn’t sure.

  The wolf, being an eternal optimist, bounded through my subconscious with puppylike glee.

  The woman, being far more pessimistic, crushed every single butterfly cocoon between shaking fingers before they hatched and started hope fluttering in her chest.

  I held my ground while the crew-cab pickup bumped into the lot and claimed a spot on the fringes. I didn’t budge until the driver opened his door and joined me in the shadow of the restaurant.

  The unruly ends of his dirty-blond hair tickled his eyelids, and he raked a long-fingered hand through the strands to shove them off his forehead. Had I waited for a perfect summer day and cut a swath of fabric from the sky, I might have had some comparison for the endless blue depths of his eyes.

  Faded jeans incased his long legs, and scuffed black boots covered his feet. A plain white tee, rumpled from his seat belt, had been topped off with a red-and-black flannel shirt. More black leather wrapped around his wrist, and his belt matched too.

  I took in all those details without once allowing my lungs to expand, because once they did, it was over. A miserable moment passed where I had to choose oxygen or passing out at his feet, and I sucked in air rich with the tang of hot metal and ozone.

  Only my teeth anchored in my bottom lip kept me from whimpering.

  Isaac Cahill, the last man I ever wanted to see again, tipped his chin. “Dell.”

  Mimicking the gesture was out. I was too afraid my chin would start wobbling. “Isaac.”

  His gaze slid over me without sticking to land on the mystery spot. “Cam mentioned your glamour problem.”

  “Funny, she didn’t mention you were coming for a visit.” The sharpness of my voice should have disemboweled him on the spot.

  “She doesn’t know I’m here.” He left me—big surprise—and went to investigate the glamour. “I’ll call her tonight and let her know I’ll be staying on at Stone’s Throw for a while.”

  “What?” I jogged to catch up to him. “Why?”

  “I’m Gemini,” he said, as if that explained the mysteries of the universe.

  Except maybe it did. Cam saw through glamour the way I saw through glass. Not only could she taste a person’s heritage with a single handshake, but she could assume some of those traits with a drop of their blood. Touch was required to pierce the veil shrouding a person, but the rules changed with terrestrial glamour. Magic anchored to a place was in the air, or so Cam had explained, and breathing it in was enough to allow a Gemini to unravel its hidden secrets.

  “Well?” I cocked my hip and waited.

  Isaac ignored me, shocker, and continued his slow circle of the area. Part of my brain was too preoccupied with absorbing all the minute changes in him since the last time we met. The other part kept being drawn back to his left hand, where a hardened spur hid beneath a fingernail. He had taken my blood once. How many others had he sampled in the time we had been apart?

  “The glamour is concealing an old Jetta.” He angled until he faced me, gaze distant on the unseen car before him. “It’s green with black trim and in cherry condition.”

  “I’ll bet you five bucks it belongs to Mr. O’Malley.” Confirmation of the make and model of his vehicle was one more reason I couldn’t put off calling Mrs. O any longer. “Is the car…empty?”

  “There are no dead bodies slumped over the steering wheel if that’s what you mean.”

  The whirr of an engine caught my attention as Enzo drove into the parking lot. He got out slowly and joined me, giving me an assessing glance before shifting his focus to Isaac.

  “I didn’t know we were expecting company,” Enzo murmured.

  “I had no idea he was coming.” Even with my eyes fixed on Isaac, I had trouble believing he was here.

  Gemini traveled in caravans. Our pack’s new digs reflected that aspect of Cam’s heritage. Isaac showing up alone, in his personal vehicle, set alarm bells clanging in the back of my mind.

  Last I’d heard, Isaac and Dot were cruising around with Cam’s parents. I had no idea if Isaac’s identical twin brother, Theo, was with them. Dot’s most recent correspondence came from somewhere in New Mexico about a week ago, if that. It gave the group plenty of time to make a leisurely trip back to Tennessee, but why would they? Why would he? Cam wasn’t here. There was nothing for him here. And he must know that if they had conferred about my problem. Meaning he had undertaken the journey before O’Malley vanished. Whatever his reason for chasing a change of scenery, it wasn’t to help crack this case.
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br />   “Are you done yet?” Enzo called as he checked his bulky silver watch.

  Isaac lifted his head, blinking free of the tangle of illusion. “Sure.” A half-cocked smile curled his lips. “You want to take a crack at it?”

  The witch arched one eyebrow. “Unless you’re planning on saving me the hassle.”

  “The ability to see through illusions is an insular talent.” He extended his hand toward me. He still hadn’t looked me in the eye. “There’s a chance since we’ve shared blood I can draw you into the illusion if you’d like to take a look around for yourself.”

  An almost imperceptible stiffening in Enzo’s shoulders left me gnawing on the inside of my cheek like it was bubble gum. “Enzo?”

  “I can break it.” Gone was his earlier uncertainty, erased by Isaac’s annoyingly smug jab. “I’m sure Mrs. O’Malley would like the car back and the lot cleared, even if we don’t learn anything new.”

  “Can you afford his help?” Isaac canted his head to one side. “My offer is free.”

  No strings attached. Yep. That summed him up to perfection.

  “Enzo has generously offered his services to Lorimar, and he’s willing to extend his expertise this far without us incurring additional costs.”

  A slight narrowing of Isaac’s eyes betrayed his disbelief. “Is that right?”

  The fae studied the witch, and the warg… Well, she just felt nauseous.

  “My bill has been paid.” Enzo raised his chin. “Dell and I are square until I say otherwise.”

  I did a double take. That sounded like a far too dangerous offer for me to accept, and yet the only alternative was to slight him in front of Isaac, who was too damn pleased with himself for his own good.

  Pivoting toward Enzo, I peered over his shoulder toward the car. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I can handle it.” A brief smile touched his lips. “Assuming you want me to?”

  The loaded questions just kept on firing. “Yes. Please.” A scowl cut Isaac’s mouth in my periphery. “You’re right about clearing the parking lot. We can’t just leave whatever this is here. Someone is bound to notice it and report it, and that’s attention we don’t need.”

  Considering Earth really was being invaded by fae, all we needed was a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists attempting to solve The Mystery of the Parking Lot Push Back. No doubt they’d find someone to debunk the obvious magic in short order. Blame it on magnets or swamp gas, water tampering or visiting aliens. Who knows?

  Humans are weird.

  Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Isaac skirted the invisible car and joined me. He stopped so close the heat from his skin warmed mine even through our clothing, or maybe the wolf was going into heat. Inwardly I groaned. That wasn’t something worth kidding about. True heats were rare for female wargs—our species wasn’t the most fertile—but they hit like tsunamis, and even sensible males lost their ever-loving minds.

  You haven’t lived until you’ve seen grown men catch a whiff of pheromones, shift and start humping a poor woman’s leg.

  Enzo jingled his keys in his hand, cast me a look that seemed to beg for me to ask him not to go, then caved and set out for the trunk of his car.

  “How long has he been here?” Isaac’s breath warmed my neck.

  “A few days.” I locked my knees to prevent them from noodling. “He got the wards operational last night. Some fine-tuning is required, or so says the witch, but they’re in place.” I showed him the same courtesy as he gave me by not meeting his gaze. “You’ll have to bleed for the wards if you want access.”

  “I figured that out when they stopped me stone-cold in the driveway.” A slight curl edged his lips. “I had to leave my Airstream behind. There wasn’t room to go forward and loop around, and backing all that way would have been a pain in the ass.”

  The fact he had brought his trailer with him hammered home his words. “You’re serious about staying?”

  “Yes.”

  Short and to the point. Okay. No wiggle room there. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Moore was on sentry duty. He spotted me and came to investigate. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t some human looking for hookups and a paid slot for the night.” A frown cut his lips so deep it was visible out of the corner of my eye. “That sounds...”

  “Yeah.” Who knew RV lingo could come off as kinky? “Bad. That sounded bad. But I know what you meant.”

  “Moore figured I was looking for you and told me you were in town. With the witch.”

  “Were you?” The breathless quality to my voice made my ears burn.

  “Of course.” He chuckled softly. “You’re the beta. Who else do I check in with?”

  A rock settled in my gut that must have shaken loose from between my ears. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course he was observing formalities. He was doing Cam a solid, helping his cousin’s pack fix a potentially dangerous situation because she was unavailable.

  I didn’t answer. I don’t think he expected me to anyway.

  “You might want to stand back.” Enzo walked past with another of those expensive black suitcases in tow. “Witch magic doesn’t always play nice with fae magic.”

  The Cantina’s alley was narrower than the one at Panda, but I headed there to be on the safe side. Isaac joined me, taking position in front of me and to one side, allowing me to watch Enzo work while shielding me with his body.

  Misplaced chivalry was no doubt to blame, but I wasn’t too proud to accept the offer of a man-sized shield placed between me and an experiment that might go boom.

  The witch knelt, opened his suitcase and balanced a thin white board on the gravel. To that he added herbs, a few drops of oil and what appeared to be tiny rodent bones. Using a silver dagger affixed to the lid, he pricked his finger and bled onto the mixture before starting to chant.

  At first nothing happened. Nothing visible to the untrained eye anyway. A few more drops of blood joined the others, and he stirred the mixture with his blade while maintaining his melodic chant.

  The scraggly hedges boxing in the rear of the parking lot began swaying, the limbs shaking in the conjured breeze. A few rocks wiggled, wobbling back and forth in time with his cadence. I strained my neck to catch a glimpse of the main road, but all was still and silent beyond our small area.

  “I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Isaac mumbled. “This kind of show will attract attention.”

  About the time I was beginning to agree with him—I mean, how long can you hide a contained hurricane?—pressure began stuffing my ears. I worked my jaw, trying to pop them. I was wiggling my finger in my right ear when sweet relief burst over my skin and the wind quieted to a whisper.

  Isaac stood a skosh taller than me. I had to nudge him aside in order to watch the boxy green car he described come into view.

  “He did it.” Relief pinned a smile on my face. “The glamour is broken.”

  The vacuum left by the spell carried my voice to Enzo, and he turned wearing an answering grin. Blood poured from his nose and dripped down his chin.

  “Enzo?”

  The spatters on his pants caught his attention, and he wiped at them as if annoyed by the possibility of stains. The motion rocked him, and he swayed. “I’m—”

  “Enzo.”

  He face-planted into the gravel.

  Chapter 11

  Isaac offered to drive us back to the RV park, and I didn’t let hair grow on the offer. Wargs are strong, and lifting Enzo into the cab of the truck was light work compared to, say, the six-dozen cinder blocks I hauled through the park in batches on my shoulders to build the short retaining wall at the clinic.

  Careful of his head, which flopped on his neck in an unsettling way, I arranged Enzo on the bench seat between Isaac and me. The seat belt I snapped around him helped secure him, and I gripped his jaw, forcing his head back to slow the bleeding.

  “We’re in, let’s go.” My leg jiggled with the wolf’s urgency to
run.

  Isaac cranked the engine and got us angled toward the road. “There are napkins in the dash if that will help.”

  “Good idea.” I fumbled behind me and fisted a handful, twisting them into slender plugs easier shoved up the witch’s nose. “Your clothes are trashed, you know that? How much did this shirt cost anyway? Probably more than I earn in a year.” Babble, babble. “Unless you know a spell that removes bloodstains. And if you do, is that something I can be taught? Living with wargs—you have no idea. Okay, you probably have some idea.”

  “He’s going to be okay, Dell.”

  Isaac’s calm voice sliced through my panic like a hot knife through butter. He sounded matter-of-fact and not placating, so I restrained the urge to snarl at him. Barely. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Witches have no power of their own. They aren’t magical creatures like fae or wargs. They’re conduits. They channel energy bound to the elements, to the earth, and that requires finesse.” He hit the road out of town going a tick above the posted speed limit. “Ripping apart glamour that strong was the equivalent of sucking on a live wire. He burned out. He’ll recover in a day or two.”

  “He’s bleeding like a stuck pig,” I growled. “We have to get it stopped, or it won’t matter if his magic will recover. He’ll be dead.” And his brother would curse the pack for allowing it to happen. Riding that unpleasant train of thought, I sent a quick mental tendril toward Abram. “We’ve got an unconscious witch bleeding all over the cab of Isaac’s truck. Meet me at the office?”

  “Enzo’s hurt?” A slight hesitation as he processed what I’d said. “Wait a minute. Isaac’s with you?”

  “Yes and yes.” I switched out the napkins for clean ones, and the blood kept dripping. “We’ll sort it all out when I get there.”

  “All right,” he said with reluctance. “I’ll meet you at the office.”

  “We’re almost there.” Isaac intruded on the conversation he wasn’t aware I was having. “Are you close enough to reach out to Abram? Can you have him meet us at the office?”