I could have lost my business, Taliyah was spending hours trying to find the killer of a girl who wasn’t even dead, not to mention the grief and suffering her family was going through.

  “You don’t understand!” Fat tears rolled down Bryony’s cheeks as she blinked rapidly. “You don’t know what it’s like for werewolf women. They were never going to let me be with Alder. They were going to force me into a life I didn’t want! Force me to settle down with someone just so I could have cubs and then my life would be nothing other than being a good little wife, quiet and submissive. I had to get out.”

  That did sound terrible. Any witch would rather eat her broomstick than be tied down like that. If some man expected me to be his good little house wolf, he’d get a face full of claws. But then, witches tend to raise their young up with certain expectations. I was sure Maverick, a warlock in a coven of witches who all believed they were superior to him simply because he was born male, would have had a great deal of sympathy for Bryony.

  “It’s not that they’re bad parents, please don’t think that.” She wiped at her eyes with a shaky hand. “They want what’s best for me. It’s just that what they’ve decided is best, isn’t what I want. And I knew if I dug my heels in and told them I wouldn’t marry Jackson, then they’d ask why, what was wrong with him, and then I’d get the whole guilt trip, and the talk about how I’m not getting younger, and how my entire life’s purpose is to have cubs, apparently, and I–” Her voice broke, shoulders shaking. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. So, I ran, and I made sure they’d never try to follow me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just needed to get out and make sure no one came looking for me. I just wanted to be free.”

  Alder hugged her to his chest with one arm, the other making a grab for the towel as all the jostling threatened to send it sliding to the floor. And I really didn’t want that to happen. Talk about an uncomfortable situation.

  It was all very sincere, but there wasn’t any need for her to lay her life story at my feet. It wasn’t like I was trying to convince her to go back and marry her sad lump of an ex-fiancé. Good riddance to him. She could ride off into the sunset with her faerie lover with my blessing, and only call home in order to send them all photos of her behind, for all I cared. I just wanted her family to stop thinking I’d murdered her, especially when she wasn’t even dead. A living person is kind of irrefutable proof of my innocence in a murder investigation, after all.

  But Bryony was obviously upset. I could see the fine trembling in her shoulders where she was clinging to Alder, like she thought I’d come to tear her from his arms like something out of a fairy tale. Those were all anti-witch propaganda, might I point out. Still, I didn’t want them suddenly deciding to put up a fight, thinking I was the enemy. So, the whole situation might need a bit of a gentle touch.

  I took a deep breath. Compassion. I could do that. Poppy practically breathed it. How hard could it be?

  “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be a female werewolf.” And thank the Goddess for that. “But I do know that faking your own death and then moving an hour away is a bone-headed idea.”

  Okay, so maybe understanding and compassion were harder than they looked. If I asked, maybe Poppy could give me some remedial lessons. Or I could just drag her around with me and point her at people who were crying. That option sounded much better, and less likely to get me cried on.

  “Portland was just a pit stop,” Alder of the slipping towel protested. “We’re leaving in a couple days.”

  Bryony nodded, sniffling loudly. “We’re going to move to one of the new Hollows, maybe Misty Hollow. Anywhere we can be safe and together, where no one knows us.”

  I didn’t barf, and frankly, I felt like I deserved a round of applause for that. Spare me from the young and infatuated. Then again, these were also the kind of people who decided that running away and leaving a fake corpse was a stellar plan, so maybe I should have just been grateful they didn’t pull a Romeo and Juliet level of nonsense.

  I glanced down, mostly to avoid visibly rolling my eyes, and saw the glint of gold on Bryony’s hand.

  “Well.” I eyed the ring. “Congratulations, I suppose. I’m not here to stop you or interfere in your relationship. Go. Be happy. Move to a new Hollow, be grossly in love with each other. But I’m going to have to insist that you let your family know that you aren’t dead. It’s going to be better coming from you then when Chief Morgan has to inform them that your ‘body’ disintegrated into foliage on the medical examiner’s table.”

  Alder winced. “I’m not that good at glamours. I always have trouble when they touch metal,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  Bryony beamed up at him, her face radiant even with the tear tracks. “You did great.”

  Their sappiness was giving me heartburn. “If we could get back on track here? You can’t leave your family thinking you’re dead, no matter how annoying they are. Plus, Chief Morgan is going to be increasingly angry if you let her keep wasting police manpower searching for your killer, and trust me when I tell you, you do not want to be on her bad side.”

  Alder went pale, sweat beading around the base of his horns. As it should. Alder, as a faun, might belong to Summer, but that didn’t mean that he’d want to tangle with Olwen, the heir apparent for the Winter throne.

  And while Taliyah wasn’t the type to break out her faerie princess authority, especially for a case, I was quite happy to wield it on her behalf. Especially if it put an end to this whole stupid farce. I wanted this drama over with because I was sure it wouldn’t be long before Haven Hollow came up with some new nonsense for me to deal with. Not to mention my business couldn’t handle a whole gaggle of werewolves spreading rumors about me, and trying to ambush me on dark roads. Not that Lorcan wasn’t happy to spend money on me, but I needed my own things in life, as well. Things I’d worked hard for. Things I cared about. Things that made me me.

  “I’ll call them.” Bryony clasped her hands in front of her chest. “I promise. Once we’re on the road, I’ll call them and let them know that I’m safe. I’ll call Chief Morgan, too.”

  Well, that was probably as good as I was going to get, and frankly, if I had to stand there watching them cling to each other all starry eyed, I was going to have to hex something out of self-defense. But, just to be sure, I whipped out my cell phone.

  “I need a picture of the two of you just in case you decide to skip out on your word,” I explained.

  Bryony nodded and the two posed as I took their picture—just to ensure that I could clear my name and so I could give the family back some of the peace of mind, in case Bryony didn’t do it for me.

  “Great. Glad you’re alive. Enjoy your honeymoon or what have you.” I turned and went for the door. I was pretty sure that sappiness wasn’t contagious, and if it was, I was likely inoculated thanks to Poppy. But I also wasn’t willing to take that chance.

  Besides, I still had a long drive ahead of me, and nothing was going to hold back the sun. It was a good thing Lorcan’s car could haul it when given the proper pedal motivation.

  “Thank you,” Bryony called out behind me.

  I waved over my shoulder. I was thoroughly done with the whole situation, and I couldn’t wait to leave rubber streaks on the road as I peeled out of Portland. If Lorcan called with another lame excuse to delay me, he was just going to have to turn into a bat and fly his butt to the city to pick up his own stuff.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Against all odds and my better judgement, Bryony actually came through with calling her family and letting them know that she was in fact alive, and married, and I couldn’t help but be curious as to which they were more shocked by.

  I only found out second hand, when a very contrite Mr. and Mrs. Reid dragged themselves into my shop with their proverbial tails tucked firmly between their legs. I told them I’d send them the picture I took of the two lovebirds, but they said they’d rather not see it. Shame, because it was a cute photo.

  There were a lot of subdued werewolves creeping around town after that, though I was pretty sure that had less to do with me being innocent and more to do with the talk Taliyah and Maverick laid down about how vigilante justice would not be tolerated in Haven Hollow. I was told there were visual aids for that presentation. Sadly, Maverick didn’t get any pictures for me.

  Though, the guilt must have been getting to them all, at least a little, because I started having an abnormal amount of werewolf customers. And it was clear they were just buying things as some kind of reparation. Well, that was judgmental of me. Maybe that burly, fifty-year-old werewolf man bought a size three sundress and a shawl because he thought it would bring out the blue in his eyes and do nice things for his shoulders. Who knew?

  Taliyah wasn’t impressed by my poking into things, but considering how everything turned out, she didn’t feel the need to read me the riot act, either. Case closed and all that. I think she was just happy she didn’t have to wrangle furious werewolves anymore.

  Poppy did eventually accept my assurances that everything was okay and stopped calling me five hundred times a day to apologize. I think she only bought it because I told her I demanded a do-over cocktail night. I did actually want one. It was still novel, being able to get together with a group of my peers and not have to worry one of them was going to poison or hex me the second my guard dropped.

  But, most importantly of all, Lorcan and I finally got our makeup date night.

  And no way was I letting him off easy. No movie night at the cinema, oh no. We were going all out with a night at a small theater just outside of town. The Black Lily Theater had only opened up a few months ago, but I’d been hearing rave reviews. Just perfect.

  Perfect enough that I decided to break out one of my newest creations for myself.

  I’d gotten the idea from a couture magazine, but then I’d gone ahead and made the dress my own. The bodice and sleeves were a gorgeous black lace that let my skin peek through in little glimpses. Though, I’d put in some lining to keep anything important from flashing. Still, the square neckline did fabulous things for my collar bones. The skirt itself fell to the floor in silky draping folds. It wasn’t so full that I’d have spilled into other people’s seats at the theater, but it was floaty and fun, and of course, just a bit witchy.

  A smoky eye, a dark plum lip, and some hair combs to keep everything smoothed into place, and I was ready to go. And since there wasn’t going to be much walking, I could wear some of my favorite, least practical shoes, with a higher heel and little silver accents that flashed when I took a step.

  The way Lorcan tripped on the carpet when he saw me made the hours of effort worth it.

  The Black Lily was just a short drive outside of Haven Hollow, and Lorcan spent the trip assuring me that I would love the play that they were currently performing. He’d kept it under wraps, claiming it was part of the ‘surprise’. I figured that I’d trust him this once, but if it was a flop, I was picking date night for the foreseeable future.

  The outside of the theater was certainly impressive. It had been given the face of an old manor house, all stone and wood and huge gleaming windows. Two and half stories high, it loomed over the parking lot, and only the lights that lined the garden path curling towards the front steps let me know the place was actually open at all. They must have put up heavy curtains in those windows, to keep the light from sneaking out.

  Gravel crunched under foot as we made our way past the flower beds and a few slender aspen trees. I’d just started regretting my choice of shoes, no matter how gorgeous they looked on my feet, when Lorcan stopped dead, his arm going rigid under my hand where he was escorting me.

  “Oh, bollocks.”

  “What?” I craned my head, trying to see what it was he was looking at. “What is it?”

  He paused, took a breath he didn’t need, and I could practically see him doing the calculations in his head: could we run back to the car before whatever it was spotted us? He was actually turning his body away, back towards the parking lot, but then seemed to think better of it.

  “Do you remember how I mentioned Dorothy?”

  I gave him a flat, unfriendly look. “Where are you going with this, Rowe?”

  A nervous chuckle slipped out of him. “Well, when I spoke to her, I might have thrown out mentions of a few places for her to see while she was in town. I’ll remind you that I was trying to distract her, of course. I never once for a second believed she might actually show up at any of those places. You understand that, don’t you, Sweetling?”

  “Is she here?” I craned harder, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman Lorcan had been running around town with behind my back. Noble intentions aside, I was still a bit put out about the whole thing.

  Lorcan grabbed my arm. “Don’t look! Ah, damn, she’s spotted us.”

  I trusted Lorcan, most of the time. I wouldn’t allow him near my blood much less my bed if I didn’t. But I hadn’t quite been able to shake the little knot of displeasure that he’d been off, running around town with this ‘Dorothy’ person and without my knowledge. It was silly, and juvenile, and I knew that. Telling myself as much didn’t seem to help at all, but it did manage to make the whole thing just that much more irritating.

  But suddenly, I was being offered a chance to size up the competition, so to speak. Even though there was no competition. At all. That didn’t stop me from being grateful that I was dolled up to the tens (potentially even the elevens), wearing a dress that I’d both designed and enchanted to show off all my best features. Unless Dorothy was an undead super model, I wasn’t going to have anything to worry about.

  She’d better not have been an undead super model, or Lorcan wasn’t going to survive the night.

  I’d braced myself for anything, a blonde Hollywood looking starlet, a voluptuous redhead, a seasoned brunette, sultry in her confidence. What I hadn’t been expecting, however, was a silver haired octogenarian who didn’t come up past my chin. Yep, that was Dorothy. And she strolled right up to us in a hot pink track suit.

  “Dorothy,” Lorcan said, politely, if a bit strained. “I see you decided to take my recommendation on the play house?”

  Dorothy fixed us both with a beady eye. She looked like any other older woman, except that her back was very straight, and her teeth were flawless. She also wasn’t wearing any kind of glasses, which made her stand out a little. But she was a bit shrunken, looking bird boned and frail underneath the polyester.

  Dorothy made an expression that, on anyone else would have been a smile. It had just a bit too many teeth in it for comfort, and her eyes stayed cold, like little chips of granite in her wrinkled face. She was nobody’s grandma, that was for sure.

  Though, to be fair, my own grandmother would have been much more likely to poison someone than bake them cookies, so I couldn’t really judge.

  The thing I noticed the most about her though, was how she stank. Nothing bad, vampires didn’t tend to have body odor, at least, not their own. But the woman reeked of vanilla perfume. Like she’d upended the bottle and poured it over herself instead of dabbing just a little on. No wonder Lorcan came home smelling like her, he’d have picked up that scent just from standing within five feet. Possibly even ten.

  I’d never known anyone with enhanced senses that wore that much perfume or cologne. It made me wonder if there was something wrong with Dorothy’s nose.

  “It sounded like an acceptable way to pass the time.”

  Even her voice was rusted with age, though it was still strong. Dorothy reached up to pat at the bun her hair was pulled back into, and I could see that each of her nails had been painted the same shade of hot pink, until they looked like Day-Glo claws. She looked me up and down, her nostrils flaring wide enough that I was glad all she could probably smell was her own perfume.

  “This is her, then?”

  The absent, almost off-hand way she spoke about me right in front of me got my hackles up. I knew picking a fight with the woman sent to investigate us wasn’t the smartest thing to do, especially when I was supposed to be a baby vampire, and not a butt-kicking High Witch. But boy, did it rankle.

  Lorcan’s smile grew a little more brittle. “Yes, this is Wanda. My Childe.”

  He reached out to take my hand where it was wrapped around his forearm, nails digging in. It probably looked like a protective gesture to Dorothy, but I knew what it really was.

  Please, don’t, that touch said. He was trying to subtly hold me back. At first, I was a bit offended. Did Lorcan really think I was so uncontrollable that I was going to out myself, blow up our life together, because of one crabby old wench being rude to me?

  Then Dorothy gave me another once over, and her face puckered up like she’d bitten into a lemon, and I thought just maybe Lorcan had a point.

  I smiled, making sure to bare the sharpened points my eye teeth had become ever since my second blooding at the hands of Janeth. Dorothy actually raised an eyebrow at that, but she stopped looking at me like I was something she’d just scraped off her sensible orthopedics.

  Finally, she grunted with something that wasn’t quite approval. Maybe approval adjacent, though.

  “The gathering is in three weeks. I’m sure I’ll see you there.”

  That was directed at Lorcan, who gave her a pained looking smile.

  “I’m certain you will.”

  Since I was standing beside him, half pulled into his body, I was probably the only one who heard Lorcan’s muttered, “Unfortunately.”

  It took more effort than I was proud of not to laugh. I pressed my lips together to flatten them out, trying to take on a more solemn expression.