Deceptions: A Collection (27 page)

“I’ve noticed,” I said dryly.
And you have no clue
.

“Why is that?”

“Apparently he finds me as amusing as you find me irritating.”

“Not possible,” he muttered, settling low in his seat and blowing out a sigh. “Not possible at all.”

The outer house of the Green Road met at a ramshackle old place that looked like it had been built to withstand hurricanes, wild witchcraft and werecreatures of all kinds.

And it looked like it had done all of those things and more.

I slid my sword into my sheath before I started toward the house.

“You think they’ll let you take that in there?”

“Yep.”

The disbelieving look in eyes was enough to have me biting back a laugh.

“The Green Road witches are crazier than most of them,” he said, keeping his voice low. “They only allow combat if you’re one of their warrior-trained ones, and everybody else is expected to be a pacifist. You carrying a blade in there is practically a declaration of war.”

“Really?”

He dragged his hands up and down over his face. “You just like seeing me have to fight over your cute ass.”

“Do me a favor and quit referring to my ass in any way,” I said.

He pushed around me as we reached the door.

“Damon, damn it.”

He paused and shot a look at me. “Wow. You did remember my name.”

The door blew open before he could knock.

The woman there was almost as tall as he was, nearly as wide, and her hair blood-red, streaked with pink and blue. Her eyes were greener than mine and her lips were black.

Just looking at her made my eyes hurt.

She stood there, glaring at Damon.

This could get ugly, I decided. I saw the magic dancing over her like a bird mantling its wings. Damon hadn’t been wrong. Green Road was full of powerful witches and most of them were pacifists. But their warriors were mad-powerful and they took their job of protecting the non-fighters very, very seriously.

This was one of the warriors, I could see it on her.

It could be amusing…a talented witch was a match for a strong shifter. Maybe even an even match. Hell, in the right situation, a warrior witch was almost an army. Of course, this wasn’t one of those situations. Still, it would be one hell of a fight.

I cleared my throat. “Hi. Colleen Antrim was supposed to send word about me. My name is Kit Colbana.”

Her green eyes cut my way and I felt the weight of her gaze like an anvil dropping down on my head. She studied me and I could feel the pressure of her magic riffling through me, tasting me, taking me in. “You went after Mandy,” she said quietly.

“Yes.” I bit my tongue on the rest of the words.
I went after her when you all wouldn’t
. Colleen had broken away from the witches when her daughter was born without magic. The witch who had headed the Green Road at the time had been a bigoted piece of work and Colleen hadn’t wanted that around her daughter. When she’d reached out to them for help, none of them had responded.

A few more seconds ticked away and then she nodded. “You’re good people. Shame the kid died.” She stood aside and said, “Come on in, Kit. You’re welcome here.”

I edged around Damon and headed inside.

He made to follow, only to freeze at the door. I’d felt the magic ripple and accept me, but it had closed immediately after. Sighing, I turned and looked at the witch. She was still studying him.

“Who is he?” she asked.

He glared at her. “Damon Lee. Cat clan of Florida.”

The witch acted as though he hadn’t spoken, looking over at me. I realized it was up to me whether he came in or not. And since we were in a house of witches, they could rebuild any ward he might try to power through.
Sweet, sweet justice
, I thought…

But, shit. I’d told him we were at a truce. And whether or not he intended to hold to it, I didn’t give my word easily.

“He’s kinda sorta my bodyguard,” I said tiredly. “And I kinda sorta agreed to work with him on the job I’m doing.” I looked at him through the weight of wards I couldn’t see. “I can’t ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but he’s not going to hurt anybody who doesn’t threaten him or me, and I’d rather not listen to him bitch at me—if you’d let him in, I’d appreciate it.”

“Hmmmm.” She continued to study me and then she shrugged, flicked her wrist. I felt the wards shift, saw the faint flicker in his eyes. As he came through, I turned my back on him.

“Some of the girls don’t get out much. They can use the eye candy.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Well, he’s pretty to look at, but tell them to keep their distance. He’s kind of toxic up close.”

“Not an issue. Shapeshifters are a pain in the ass and the males are even worse, especially when they are in rut.” She headed into the gloom of the house and I followed along, frowning over that last statement. “I’m Kori, by the way. Colleen and I were trained together. She’s good people. Thanks for…well, Mandy. Some of us should have been there. We weren’t.”

I kept my mouth shut.

The only thing that would come out wasn’t going to endear me to her and I didn’t want to see if Damon could fight his way out of a house of angry witches if I pissed enough of them off.

In the door of a massive library, she stopped and turned to face me, a smile on her face. “Nothing to say to that?”

“Nothing to say.”

“Oh, you got plenty,” she mused, shaking her head. “You just hold your cards close to your chest. Smart girl.”

Behind us, Damon made an odd, choking sound that might have been a smothered laugh.

“I just know when to hold them sometimes,” I said, sliding him a dirty look.

Kori smiled. “Maybe that’s what it is.” She nodded to the library. “You want Jo. She’s in the stacks.” Then she pinned a hard look on Damon. “You don’t want to go in there. Maybe you’re her bodyguard or whatever, but Jo isn’t one of our fighters. The girl can take little Jo blindfolded, even with magic. You will scare her. If you go in there, she’ll shut down and whatever information you want from her? You won’t get.”

Damon lifted his hands, moved two paces and leaned back against the wall, folding his arms over his chest.

Day-yum. I actually got to get away from him for a few minutes. I gave Kori a bright smile. “Hey, mind if I hang around here for a few days?”

She laughed and then headed down the dark hallway. “I’m on kitchen duty tonight. You all are welcome to eat with us if she doesn’t freak you the hell out, Colbana.”

In the stacks.

I thought it would be easy to find her.

It took me almost thirty minutes.

Because she wasn’t on her feet and she wasn’t on the floor.

She was hovering in midair, arms wrapped around herself and rocking, mumbling and muttering.

“Ah…hey, Jo.”

She tensed. The rocking grew more frenzied.

Licking my lips, I looked around, spotted a table. I started to strip off my weapons, all of them. Once I’d stripped them all away, I looked back up. But she wasn’t there.

Aw, hell
.

“Jo…”

I searched the air above me, but she wasn’t anywhere—

A flicker of movement just out of the corner of my eye had me turning and I saw her drifting around the edge of the bookshelf at my back. I caught her just as she moved into the next aisle, clutching a book in her thin, pale hands. “Jo. I’d like to talk to you.”

She glanced at me and her eyes were awful.

Black, empty and void of…everything.

Swallowing the knot in my throat, I managed to squeeze out, “It’s about the boy you saw.”

Slowly, she drifted down, down, down…then she stood and shook her head. When she looked at me again, there was…sense. I guess. Something of self in her eyes and I sensed…witch. Her power. Earlier there hadn’t been much of anything.

Just cold.

“The boy,” she whispered.

“Yes. You saw him.”

“No.” She shook her head and gestured broadly at nothing. “They saw him.”

“Who are they?”

Her eyes went black. “We are.”

The skin on the nape of my neck crawled and I hoped like hell I didn’t let the fear I felt show. “And who are you?”

“We are we. And we saw him. He’s dying. You can’t save him because you are not looking. He’s no longer the predator…just prey. Just meat. Like we were.”

She blinked and the moment shattered. Jo stood there looking at me with lost, sad eyes. “I’m sorry. Did they talk to you?”

Numbly, I nodded.

“I hope they helped.”

Then she gathered up a stack of books I hadn’t noticed and slid out of the library.

Helped?

Um. No. Not really.

As I left the library, another witch was waiting. She was as lacking in color as Kori had rocked it—hair so blonde, it was practically white, skin so pale I don’t think she ever went out in the sun, and her eyes were so pale a gray they seemed nearly colorless. Her clothes were white. Everything. White.

A polite smile curved her lips as she nodded at me. “I’m Es.”

“S. As in the letter?” Immediately, I winced. “Sorry.”

She chuckled. “Colleen told me you were…well, I’ll be polite. But it’s fine. It’s E-S. But yes, it sounds like S the letter. I’m the mother here.”

Witch houses had a leader. A mother, or if the most powerful was a guy, the father. I hope I managed to keep my astonishment hidden. Nothing about her screamed power—shit, Kori’s strength had made this woman seem like…nothing.

Another one of those polite smiles curved her lips. “I wouldn’t be much of a caretaker if I intimidated the hell out of every witch who came to me, would I?” she said gently. She looked down the hall, gazing in the direction Jo had run. “Many of mine are…broken. They need a quiet hand, Kitasa. I imagine you can appreciate that.”

Blood crept up the back of my neck, up my cheeks until I knew I all but glowed with it.

She was studiously looking the other way. “After all, you deal with many victims in your line of work.”

Nice lifeline to offer there. But I wasn’t buying it. Colleen had sensed the very same thing on me the day she’d met me. And just like Es here, she’d pretended otherwise.

Swallowing the shame and disgust rising inside me, I shouldered around her and headed for the front door. Damon was already at my back when she called out, “There are a few other witches you might want to speak with, aneira. This goes…deeper, I suspect, than you realize.”

I twitched at the sound of the formal title on her lips. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, I jammed my hands into my pockets and stared at the dirty toes of my boots. I wanted to leave. Hell, I wanted to just fade away, lose Damon and take off running. If I ran hard enough, I’d eventually lose them. I could get lost in the world. I’d done it before.

But the problem was sooner or later, one of them would find me.

My grandmother had been happy enough once I was out of her hair and she didn’t have to see me.

But the cat bitch wasn’t going to be so easily satisfied. She’d hired me to do a job.

If it had been any other job, I might have been willing to risk it.

Screw
might
.

I would have done it.

That kid’s sad, lost eyes haunted me, though.

Pulled me in.

Wearily, I turned around and found myself staring at the wall of Damon’s chest. “Can you move, please?” I said.

He stepped aside. But he didn’t stay there. As I headed down the hall, my ever-present shadow was at my back.

“Tate,” Es said, gesturing to the witch behind the two-way glass. “She’s got a way with fire. One of our younger ones and just so you know…she hates anybody who isn’t a witch. If it hadn’t been a witch child she saw, she wouldn’t have cared. Now, take notice…she would have seen it, but she wouldn’t have cared.”

“She saw a kid being kidnapped?” Damon demanded.

“No. She saw a kid getting into a car.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Tate notices everything and she’ll notice more about you than you could possibly imagine, including what you had for breakfast, the fact that you’re in rut, and the fact that you hate your Alpha. If you don’t want her seeing anything that I just saw, you might want to lock it down so very tight, even you can’t see it.”

I snorted. “Es, you have to get your eyes, or your witch-whatever checked. He’s slavishly devoted to that woman.”

“Oh, he’s enslaved…to something,” Es murmured. “But that doesn’t mean the same as devotion.”

Then she turned those colorless, powerful eyes on me. “She might go kinder on you, but I don’t know. You’re not human and you smell like magic. She’s young and her parents were mortal…she might think you have some witch blood in you. She won’t know your bloodline.”

“Very few do.”

Es nodded. “True enough. But it may not matter. I’ll be there with you because if she gets angry, I’ll have to be the one to run interference.” She looked at Damon. “You’ll have to get her out if she gets angry.”