Chapter 23

A nondescript carI didn’t recognize was parked in my driveway when I returned home, and from the smell of exhaust in the air, it had only recently arrived. As the farmhouse was still standing, the Crafting Circle ladies still clustered against the window, flattening Sawyer and Ame against the glass where they sat on the sill, I had to assume this was the vehicle the tracker had run off to retrieve.

Sure enough, he exited his car just as I did, his golden eyes wide and incredulous. “Where did you go?” he demanded.

I slammed the car door shut and thrust my hip out to the side. “You’ll not be using that tone when you talk to me, Grumpy. Seems like you don’t need these clothes I got for you, so I can turn around and take them right back.”

Sure enough, the shifter was clothed in a waffle-texture henley and jeans, a military surplus jacket hugging his muscled frame.

The scowl lines creasing his face smoothed as he approached, boots crunching on the gravel. “You got me clothes?”

“And boots.” I thrust the sack at him. “Figured you’d cause less of stir that way if you weren’t naked all the time.”

“I keep spares in my trunk.” But he took the sack, giving it a curious glance inside. “But it’s always best to have extra. Uh, thanks.” Then he was all business again. “You can’t run off like that. We don’t have much time.”

“What ‘we?’”

“Yeah,” Flora piped up, her small legs propelling her across the porch. Sawyer outpaced her, avoiding the shifter and springing into my arms. Behind them, Daphne, Shari, and Ame crowded the front doorway. “What’s this all about, wolf boy?”

If Grumpy had been a wolf, his ears would’ve flattened at the patronizing term. As it was, in his human form, his teeth clenched as his gaze narrowed.

“My name is not Grumpy, and it’s definitely not ‘wolf boy,’” he growled. “It’s Lewellyn Chase.”

“Did you say Chaste?” Daphne asked.

“No.”

“That’s a relief,” she breathed.

The shifter wet his lips, assessing the elegant older woman with his sharp golden gaze. But it was only for a moment, wrenching his attention back to me, mission-oriented. “I’ll explain in the car.” He opened the door. “Get in. We’re going to Indianapolis.”

“Now wait just a daisy-pickin’ minute.” Flora’s boots stomped down the porch steps. “You told us you’d explain everything when you got back and now she has to go in a car with you by herself to a city where she has no friends or connections? Absolutely not.” The garden gnome thrust her wand in the air. “She’s not going anywhere without a chaperone!”

“Fine.” In a flash, the shifter plucked up the now-squealing garden gnome and tossed her (lightly) into the backseat of the car. Then he thrust his hand at me, demanding I take it. “Misty.”

I shifted Sawyer in my arms so I could dig the tourmaline sphere out of my pocket. “You know where to put it,” I whispered down to him, carefully inserting it between his white teeth. “I’ll be back.”

Amber eyes bright, the black crystal held gently in his mouth, the tabby tomcat rubbed his head against my chin before dropping down and racing for the farmhouse. The Crafting Circle ladies parted to let him through, then resumed their clustering.

“I’ll make that tater tot casserole when I get back,” I called as I slipped into the passenger seat.

Shari didn’t correct me this time. “O-okay.”

“I’ve got his license plate number, dear,” Daphne assured. “And a very detailed physical description.”

The muscle in Lewellyn’s jaw feathered at that, like he was biting back a retort. Without replying, he dropped down into the driver’s seat, wrenched on the ignition, and wheeled the car around.

I gave Flora a warning look to keep her mouth shut until he was out of the driveway and on the country road headed into town. The moment the car’s tires hit asphalt, the tip of her beechwood wand flared like a green star. “Spill it!” she shrilled. “Or I’ll put that carnivorous clematis seed back in to finish growing! I’ve always wanted one with golden petals.”

“Let’s start with your job description.” I angled myself sideways in the seat, keeping one eye on the road and one on him, my magic ready to spring to my fingertips at any moment.

“I’m a retrieval expert,” the shifter answered.

“So what were you doing snooping around my yard?” Flora pestered. “And why did you call her Meadow?”

Lewellyn didn’t answer right away, concentrating on the traffic as he entered the interstate headed north. Then he checked his mirrors again for what had to be the hundredth time, no doubt confirming we weren’t being followed. I knew it because I’d done the same only a billion times over since fleeing the manor.

The shifter gave me a sideways glance. “Because that is her real name.” But he didn’t reveal my surname, probably for any number of very good reasons. “She’s a witch on the run, but you knew that, didn’t you, gnome?”

“My name’s Flora. Flora Ironweed,” she replied imperiously. “I want you to know it, especially if I have to kick your fanny all the way back to whatever city you came from.”

Lewellyn risked a backwards glance at her then shifted it to me. “I wasn’t aware garden gnomes were so… feral.”

“Just the Midwestern ones,” I replied. “So what are you doing here?”

The shifter returned his attention to the traffic, sucking his breath as he prepared to deliver his story with military efficiency. “I was contacted by my client due to an unusual purchase—a moonflower vine.”

“Stupid Geoffrey Picket,” Flora hissed, throwing herself against the backseat to sulk. Or plot the plant enthusiast’s demise.

“I was informed,” Lewellyn continued, ignoring Flora’s interjection, “that such a purchase was highly suspicious, as moonflowers are rare and expensive. That it most likely meant a witch was injured.”

I didn’t dare look at the garden gnome, but I could feel her gaze drilling into the side of my face.

“So I went to the seller in St. Louis and tracked the purchase down to Southern Indiana.”

“What did you do to Geoffrey?” Flora shouted, the tip of her wand flaring again. She looked ready to stab it into his neck.

I plucked it from her hand and set it in the nearest cupholder. “You can have that back when you’re not threatening to kill the driver and crash us into a bloody pulp.”

“The human’s fine,” the shifter growled. “We don’t go around mauling everyone, you know. To stay on topic, rumor of a bright flash of white light was a secondary confirmation that my quarry was in little ol’ Redbud, though of course there was no Meadow listed in the town directory. Then I came tracking the moonflower purchase to your house, gnome, with its freaky little plants.”

Flora crossed her arms over her chest, looking smug. “That’s what you get for snooping.”

He rolled his golden eyes. “Then I was trapped in my wolf form. Those wards disoriented me, wounded me, and the next thing I knew I was in a bathtub with oatmeal shampoo and this druidess was standing over me with electric trimmers.” Lewellyn shuddered at the memory, broad shoulders rippling.

“And?” Flora prompted.

Thistle thorns, she was a relentless nudge. I flapped my hand at her to keep quiet. Her interruptions were making this conversation take forever, and it was all I could do to just sit here and listen while my mind whirled at the implications his explanation was invoking.

Focus, came Grandmother’s voice.

“And then, as fate would have it,” the shifter continued, turning his golden eyes to me, “I was delivered to very young woman I’d been tasked to find.”

My hands clenched in my lap, the trust I’d placed in this shifter evaporating as we’d finally come to it. “Who sent you?” I whispered.

At that exact moment, the alarm on his watch sounded. Without replying, he silenced the alarm then lifted his cell phone, tapping what had to be a speed dial button and pressing the phone to his ear. The cabin of the car became deathly quiet, the road noise and surrounding traffic lowering to a dull hum. Flora crept forward, climbing onto the center console between the seats as I leaned in to listen.

We both jumped when we heard the call connect, but the shifter’s voice was smooth. “This is Lewellyn Chase.”

There was a pause, the call redirecting, and a voice answered, “Report.”

I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle my yelp, simultaneously lurching away from that familiar cadence until I was pressed up against the passenger window.

Grandmother!