“I know,” I say, rolling over so I can hook my leg around him. And I do know. Ethan would fight to the death for me, and that terrifies me more than anything. My worst fear is something bad happening to the ones I love and I couldn’t see how that could kill me.
But it would break my heart, piece by painful piece, if I had to watch Ethan endure any sort of pain at my expense. I hadn’t thought it was even a possibility before, but I know it is now, without a shadow of a doubt.
Ethan would do anything to save me, no matter the cost.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
The smell of coffee fills the air and I slow, breathing it in, before shoving my feet into boots and pulling on my heavy winter coat. Only Harrison and Sam are up, which surprises me. Sam is upstairs in the bathroom, and Harry is in the kitchen. Thankfully, he already started a pot of coffee.
“If I would have known you would be up before me, I would have asked you to feed the horses,” I grumble to my brother as he opens and closes cabinets, looking for a coffee mug.
“I don’t do horses, you know that.” He finally finds the mugs and gets two down. “Want coffee?”
“It’s more of a need,” I say. “Why are you up so early?”
“As much as I hate admitting it, I’m getting used to getting up early for work. That and knowing that my sister basically has a warrant out for her arrest made it hard to sleep.”
“Getting arrested would almost be the better option here.”
“If this Steph chick does go through with things and reports you and all that shit happens, do you think Ethan would leave the Order?” Harrison pours coffee into both mugs and hands me one. Too lazy to take my boots off, I walk across the kitchen and get the creamer from the fridge.
“I’d hope so.” I let out a breath. “It would be almost insulting if he didn’t, right? Or am I being self-absorbed in all this?”
Harrison stares at me, unblinking. “You’re joking, right?”
“About which question?”
“There’s nothing self-absorbed about wanting your boyfriend to leave an organization who is basically going to kill you if they find out you’re a witch.”
I sip my coffee and hear the floor creak above us as Sam leaves the bathroom. Taking my coffee along, Hunter and I go out to the barn.
“Morning, guys.” A smile comes to my lips as soon as I step into the barn, breathing in the sweet scent of horse feed and hay. Mystery and Sundance nicker to me and both Ross and Rachel start braying. They’re so loud it makes me laugh, and I brush everyone as they’re eating their morning hay.
“I know you’re getting bored,” I tell Sundance, running a brush over his fur. “We’ll start riding again soon, I promise.” It took him a while to settle into his new laid-back lifestyle, having been a show-horse most of his life. “And I still miss her, too.” My heart still hurts when I think of Leslie, and the guilt of her death will never, ever leave me.
And it shouldn’t.
“Good news is we’re supposed to have some nice weather next week.” I trade the dandy brush for a curry comb, getting dried mud off his back legs. Why I’m bothering to clean him up before I let him out to go roll is beyond me, but I quite enjoy brushing my horses. “And there are a few places to trail ride. I think you’ll happily trade the jumping circuit for some trail rides with fallen logs to jump over instead, right?”
He keeps munching on his hay and I go into Mystery’s stall, wanting to give up before I get started. His white fur is stained yellow and brown from laying down on his own poop and then rolling in the mud outside. I like to keep everyone out in the pasture as much as possible, though until we get the run-in shelters built this Spring, they can’t spend the night out there just yet.
I take my time cleaning stalls and tidying up the barn, subconsciously knowing that as soon as I go back into the house, it’s crunch-time. Technically, it’s crunch-time now, but I can avoid it if I don’t think about it. When the stalls are all cleaned, water buckets are washed, and the dirt aisles have been raked, I can’t come up with any other excuse to stay out here.
Everyone is grazing out at the back of the pasture again, and sunlight streams down on me. It’ll be a somewhat decent day for early March, though I won’t be able to enjoy any of the sunshine until I’ve cleared my name and we’ve caught the demon.
“Morning,” Laney says when I come into the kitchen, stepping out of my boots. “I would have helped you take care of the horses, you know. I miss Mystery and I’m dying to meet the donkeys.”
“You ride?” Sam asks, sipping coffee as she scrolls through something on Ethan’s computer.
“I do. I’m nowhere as good as Anora but give me a calm horse and a trail and I’m in my element.”
“Maybe you two can ride,” Ethan suggests. He’s standing at the stove, making scrambled eggs. This time, when I watch him cook and find him so fucking hot, nothing tries to slurp up that energy.
“Yeah, I’d love that!” Laney nods enthusiastically. “But I’m guessing that has to wait until after this demon is caught.”
“Definitely.”
A timer goes off and Nik gets a fresh batch of muffins from the oven. It’s a bit of chaos for the next few minutes, but then we all gather around the dining room table, plates full. A tense silence falls over us as we eat, and I know I’m not the only one feeling like this is the calm before the storm.
Everyone pitches in to clear the table and clean up the kitchen, and then it’s back to the dining room. Ethan and Harrison are already going through print outs of everything Julia sent . I’m internally cringing as they hang each paper up using Scotch tape on the vintage wallpaper. We don’t have any painters tape, and if this helps catch our killer, I’ll happily re-wallpaper in the future.
“I got some new info from Jules,” Ethan tells us, coming back from the library, having gotten a few new pages from the printer. “Miles Dumont is our first victim. He was found dead in his office six weeks ago. Cause of death was originally ruled accidental, but his children requested the investigation be opened and it’s now being seen as a possible murder, though his office building has pretty impressive security.”
He tapes the paper to the wall above the others. “He died from blunt force trauma to the back of the head. While sitting at his desk and was on a Zoom call that blacked out moments before the official TOD. His office door was locked, and security footage shows that no one entered or left his office the hour before he died.”
“Let me guess,” Sam starts, flipping through my Book of Shadows. “He was actually scared to death.”
“Yep. The second investigation found that a heart attack was the actual cause of death and the detective assigned to his case is facing a lawsuit. The ME is a bit stumped on this one as well. Because reports are showing that the heart attack and the head injury happened at the same time.”
“Was he a hunter?” I ask.
“Far from it,” Ethan says. “He worked at an auction house, authenticating historic objects. The guy was wheelchair bound after a car accident twenty years ago.”