The seemingly endless forest begins to thin, giving way to a small town with a rusted, long-abandoned factory and a paint-chipped gas station. Within two blinks, we’re through the town and entering an area that’s fields upon fields. The crops are already harvested, but yellowed corn husks still soar above the tall ditch grass and skitter across the road. It’s hard to believe that not twenty miles in the other direction is a prospering city. A twenty-minute drive, and the world can look entirely different.
I must have been silent longer than I realized because soon, Jacob asks again, “What are you thinking about?”
The deep rumble of his voice startles me, and a blush heats my cheeks. I don’t want to admit to my observations, so I pick another topic, one that has been popping into my head a lot lately and one I haven’t dared yet try to answer.
I rub at my cold nose as I ponder, “If Kaya Whitethorn is a skinwalker, do you think there are others?” He implied it already, but I need him to voice it out loud.
Jacob twists his lips to the side, studying the underside of a bridge as we pass below it. Sara and I used to take our pilfered liquor to that bridge and spend half the night with our feet dangling over the side. “I don’t see why not. It’s another thing we can ask your mother.”
I nod shallowly. “It must have been terrifying for her,” I mutter.
“What?”
“For Kaya. She was raised in a tribe whose tales had warned about skinwalkers and their evil ways. Her entire life, she had to hide who she was because she was a legend come to life. I sort of understand why a shifter pack could have lured her to be faithful to them.”
“It’s still no excuse,” he grumbles.
“No,” I admit thoughtfully. “But I understand it better.” After all, I had grown up similarly.
I have to believe everything happens for a reason. I have to, because if I don’t, then what’s the point of life? A bundle of coincidences? That’s pretty hopeless, and I’m tired of being hopeless. A hopeless, helpless misfit. But I’m not truly a misfit, am I? There could be more skinwalkers out there. There could be more, and I’d be less unique. The thought makes a small smile tug at my lips, but then it quickly falls. If there are more, could this be another species in the tally of rivals? Would the shifters and witches accept the skinwalkers? I glance at Jacob nervously.
“What should I expect?” he asks softly, taking my wariness as something else.
I turn his hand in mine, open his palm, and trace the lines and calluses. “What do you mean?” The action is oddly sensual, and he shivers every time my fingers touch a sensitive spot.
“About your coven. What should I expect?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Why do you ask?”
“Because the way you’re touching my palm is making my body feel like it’s on fire, and I can sense your nerves.” I snap my gaze to his. “I have to wonder if you’re doing it for my comfort or your own. Am I the one walking into a pit of hissing snakes, or are you?”
I clear my throat, unnerved about how he can see through me so well. Then, I paste a wicked grin on my face.
Raising his hand to my mouth, I bite the outer edge of his thumb. He hisses my name, bucks on the seat, and readjusts his pants.
I hum. “And if I do this?” Watching him from under my lashes, I suck his thumb into my mouth. His lips part at the sensation.
I sigh and drop his hand back to my thigh. “You’re right,” I say with a fake tone. “Now isn’t the time.”
His growl vibrates my chair. I chuckle, feeling accomplished in at least one thing today – distraction.
“So, which is it?” he turns down the heat, which has made the car stifling. “Are you worried they won’t accept me, or is it that they won’t accept you?”
I turn my head and look out the window. My gaze travels far across the fields. “Both,” I whisper honestly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jacob Trent
Our car doors shut, the sound punching the air, and I breathe in the country atmosphere. It smells so fresh yet vastly different than the forests behind the compound. I can taste the churned earth and plucked corn still riding on the breeze. Inside me, my wolf warily watches on and absorbs every detail he can take in.
The coven’s driveway is a long strip of packed dirt. The cars parked along it are in various stages of age and rust. Next to them, my SUV stands out like a hangnail on a rich guy’s manicured fingernails.
Sara locks arms with Jinx as they gaze up at the house. Dirty windows dimly glare with the lowering sun’s reflection. They spare each other a glance, huff as one, and then stride in a resemblance of a death march to the back of the Lotus Coven’s house.
I note how the two women seem braced – united against whatever they believe will happen once we enter. Cinder and I trail close behind them on our way to the back door, flicking curious glances at one another.
The home is surrounded by miles of flat land. With most of the crops harvested, it resembles a sea of brown and gold. Every now and then, a stray tree has grown along a fence line, or a dusty dirt road acts as a barrier between the fields. Other than that, the only thing interrupting the view is the gently rolling hills that the fields spread across.
We pass a few oversized jack-o’-lanterns decorating the long back patio. “Halloween is in a few days,” Cinder murmurs. I grunt my acknowledgment.
The patio’s wood planks are old and weathered, adding to the lore of the creepy faces carved into the pumpkins and the witchy atmosphere of the coven’s land. I can feel the magic, practically smell it cling to each piece of grey siding.
“Eerie,” I admit.
The place is so quiet. Several chairs sit on the porch, arranged to view the setting sun. There’s a large garden, too. It looks like it hasn’t been weeded in weeks, and I frown at its sad state.
Aren’t witches supposed to have green thumbs? Gardens are their pride and joy, but this . . . This is a sad patch of weeds.
Though it’s a good ten feet away from the path we walk on, I sniff at it, leaning and then recoiling immediately. “The hell?” I hiss. It smells similar to decay.
“It’s spelled,” Cinder whispers helpfully. “Sara told me.”
“Why?”
“The garden is warded,” Jinx interjects, her voice prim and proper. I turn my attention to her. Both she and Sara had stopped at the base of the porch steps when they noticed our attention drifting. “Everything is warded.”
“That’s why you can’t hear a sound from within the house,” Sara adds.
A crow lands on the porch and picks at the missing eyeball of a pumpkin. It unnerves Cinder, and he sidesteps further away from the bad omen. “So,” he drawls. “If someone were murdered inside, anyone outside would never hear the screams?”
We scowl at Cinder’s dark thoughts while he shoos the brave bird away.
“Nice,” I say sarcastically.
“A morbid way to look at it,” Jinx replies snidely, looking over her shoulder at the back door. The old door had been painted blood red at some point, but the paint is peeling off around the knob. “But I suppose so.”