Mate, he rumbles in contentment. I blink hard to it and then survey the room for a distraction.
“What is all that stuff?” I point to the objects that had plunged from the nightstand.
Scowling, she follows my finger’s line of sight to the several different shaped pebbles, a bundle of what looks to be dried sage, and a miniature . . .
I cock my head to the side. “Is that a skull?”
“A mouse skull.” Her cheeks pink, and she rubs the back of her neck. “Little things I collected as a child.”
“You collected a mouse skull . . .”
Quickly, she gets to her knees on the floor. Dust bunnies run for cover under the bed, and she snatches a box I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a little rectangle cardboard box the size of my hand. And as she starts to carefully tuck her things back inside it, I hop off the bed and crouch beside her.
My hand on her shoulder makes her pause. A little rock rests in her palm. “Can I see?”
She slowly releases a breath, rubbing a thumb over the rock’s pale blue ridges, and her throat bobs. Reluctantly, she passes it to me. It settles warm in my palm as if heat radiates inside it.
I bring it up to the light filtering in through the window. “What is this?”
“A rock.”
I grin. “Obviously. Why do you have it? Why do you have all this stuff?”
She gathers up the rest of the things and puts them into the box. The lid remains off though, and she sits back on the bed with it. I stay crouched, swivel to face her, and gently squeeze her knee with my free hand.
“It’s stuff I gathered as a kid.”
“Why?”
She looks away. “I used them to pretend I was a witch.”
“Why?”
She snorts. “Everyone else could do spells or work some sort of magic. I couldn’t do any of that. I was a disappointment, so . . .”
Understanding dawns, and I look at the pebble, weighing it in my palm. “So you gathered objects and pretended you could.” She nods. “And the skull?”
She swallows thickly. “Taken from the coven’s supply.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought I could put the mouse to rest. I was its guardian angel or something.”
I blink at her. It’s not normal for a child to hoard part of a skeleton. It’s not normal for a child to want to be a dead mouse’s guardian angel, either. I’ve met them. The last thing they would care about is a rodent.
“It was silly.” She waves it off. “But when I was a kid, it made sense.”
“And now it’s in your box.” I point to the white skull while trying to wrap my mind around this.
She sighs heavily. “Yes. I was trying to put it to peace, okay?”
“I see.” Gently, I set the rock in the box with the others.
“I was lonely,” she adds, replacing the lid on top. “Lonely kids do odd things.”
A few seconds drag by with me staring at her and her avoiding my stare. I eventually fold my fingers around her hands, which are tightly clasping the box. This brings her eyes to mine, and I whisper. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. You don’t have to be embarrassed about how you chose to survive in a household who couldn’t love you in the way you needed.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I kiss her forehead as I stand and hold out my hand for her to take. “Besides. I’ve met some guardian angels.”
She frowns as I pull her to her feet. “You have?” As an afterthought, she grabs the tray then allows me to lead her across the room.
“During the Realms War. Saw their castle on the Guardian Realm, too. Egotistical assholes with their bows and lightning rods.” I flick her nose. “No number of tiny objects would have made you one of them.”
She smacks me on my shoulder, and I laugh while closing her bedroom door behind us.
Jinx returns the tray to the kitchen while I head to the bathroom to brush my teeth in hopes of scrubbing away the bitter aftertaste of orange juice. In the hall, I bump into a witch who, at first, seems frightened of me. She’s around my age, and her mousy brown hair is wild around her face. Her pajama nightgown is something out of a gothic horror movie.
While she blinks her surprise, I start to mumble my apology. She hisses as soon as I open my mouth. Teeth bared and all.
“Mongrel,” she whispers, dripping with barely contained hatred.
Dumbfounded, I watch her march away. Hostile indeed.
I stuff myself into the tiny, outdated bathroom and turn on the spluttering faucet. I can’t blame the witches for defending their ground. They have no reason to trust shifters – to trust us. This coven wasn’t at the Realms War. They didn’t fight alongside us. They don’t realize we’re no longer the enemy. And they weren’t the ones who had our backs and us theirs. To them, nothing has changed. We’re still rivals. It’s going to make this day miserable, and since Sara and Jinx have plans for a little magic lesson, I doubt we’ll be going home.
Once finished and dressed for the day, Jinx and I head outside.
“That’s the fourth time you’ve checked your phone since I came back from the kitchen,” Jinx murmurs as we step onto the porch. The morning sun is blinding when there are no trees to block us from the rays. I shield my eyes from the autumn chill biting at my skin and survey the land.
Frost covers the empty fields and glitters as it melts. Birds peck at the dirt, and a fat squirrel munches on something in his tiny little fingers.
Pulling away from the scene, I frown down at her and stuff the phone into my back pocket.
“Your pack won’t disintegrate without you governing over it,” she chides gently, grinning up at me to smooth the jab. Her shoulder bumps into mine as she leads us down the steps.
“I’m not waiting for the pack to update me. I have shifters following leads.”
“Leads?” she asks distractedly. I get the sense she’s just filling silence. Her mind is occupied, and her attention sweeps across the patchy grass, the dilapidated shed and old barn, and the garden that looks more like an overgrown patch of weeds than an actual garden. I can still see the magic shimmering around it though – sense it as well as forecasted snow. It makes me wonder what’s on the other side of the magic, what it’s concealing.
“Yes,” I say, shoes crunching against the frost. She pulls at her fingers as she steers us toward the garden. Something’s bugging her, and I want so badly to ask, but I’ve learned with Jinx, it’ll come out in time. If I prod her, she’ll only bury it deeper, completely out of reach.
I pull her close and wrap my arms around her waist. “About your aunt,” I say quietly, urging the conversation forward if for no other reason than to pull her out of her head.
“Oh,” she says curtly, stiffly. Shit. The look that crosses her face makes me regret ever bringing it up. There’s conflict there – conflict she hasn’t yet worked through.
She doesn’t say any more as she leads us under the archway into the garden. The scent of decay is strong here, and I suppress a gag. It’s roped with brittle vines and supported by dying sunflowers. My shoulder brushes the vine, and I hiss as its thorn pricks the back of my hand.
“Blood tribute, remember?” Jinx says in the way of explanation.