Chapter 5

Five

"Scarlette?"

My attention snaps from the book in my hands and I look up at Thomas, watching me with faint lines of concern creasing his brow.

"Good morning."

He doesn't return the greeting, instead, his gaze travels down me to my feet. "Go somewhere?"

I cringe and put the book I'd been skimming through back into its place and close up the step. "Not on purpose."

He doesn't like that answer, but he helps me to standing, and then, he picks me up, carrying me through the house, past the line of my muddy footprints and straight through to my bathroom. He doesn't set me down until he starts the water in the tub, and then, he pulls the hand-held sprayer from its antique-phone-like perch.

"Lift," he says, holding out his hand for one of my feet. When I give it to him, I can't make out the words he mutters over the sound of the water.

He keeps muttering until he's washed both of my feet, and soaped all the way up to my knees.

I keep my lips pressed firmly shut. The last thing I want to do is laugh when he looks this irritated.

I don't say anything until he helps me back out of the tub and drops to his knees with a towel.

"Thank you."

His response is a warning glance up my body. "You have cuts."

"They're just scratches. I'll take care of them later, I promise."

"You'd better." He picks me up again, and when he takes me back to the kitchen, Joshua is putting away my mop while Johnny and Chase fuss near the oven.

"That smells delicious." Whatever Johnny has in the oven it was definitely made with rosemary and bread.

"Do you want to tell us about your little excursion?" Joshua asks, bringing me the robe I'd left slung over the sofa last night. "I may have disposed of the evidence, but we all know you went out, barefoot and barely dressed."

"And," Chase added, blowing on his coffee. "You only get so sucked into searching for a spell you ignore us when something's really wrong."

The timer goes off with a sharp trill, and Johnny mutters the whole time as he pulls out the pan of muffins.

"Stay there." Thomas says, his stern tone emphasized by a finger pointed at the chair, and my butt in it.

While he and the others move around my kitchen, it gives me time to decide just what to tell them. Not because I want to hide things from them… but because I need to decide what I'm willing to believe is true.

By the time food is placed in front of me and they all sit, watching me, warily, the words are less of a jumble in my mind.

"I'm not exactly sure what happened, but if you want to know, I can tell you what I think happened."

"We want to know." Johnny's fork clacked against the plate. "We always want to know what happens."

I nod, letting the bite I took give me another moment to word it correctly in my head.

"I woke up in the woods, about a quarter of a mile south."

They blink at me, none of them saying a thing.

This is the part they're not going to like. "And when I did a tiny spell to see what or who pulled me out of the house… It looked like the ghost of Aphrodite Lourdes."

Joshua curses under his breath. "Can a ghost actually hurt you?"

"One that's connected to you? Yes. Especially one that's a witch. But I don't know how she's connected to me."

"So what do we do?" Chase asks, focus on the mini quiche in his hand.

"I don't know how, or why yet. But I will figure it out."

Joshua looks at the back door, and then to me. "Do you know what woke you up?"

"I think it was a combination of your wolves, and the wards around my property line."

They all nod and—after sharing a glance between them—they go back to their food with pinched brows.

"You guys are eerily calm right now."

Johnny laughs. "Oh, I am very freaked out. But I promised that I'd keep it together when weird stuff started to happen. You're a witch. We're werewolves. Weird comes with the territory."

"We know you'll tell us what we can do, when you know how we can help." Chase watches me for a long moment before he says, "If there's something that threatens you, it threatens all of us."

"Besides," Thomas says with a smile. "I already told you you had me all week. That hasn't changed. You'll always have at least one big bad wolf around to keep you in the house."

But that's not what truly scares me.

"If she's connected to me, she's still connected to you. Please keep your amber on and tell me the second anything weird happens."

This is all too new to me. I refuse to let a dead woman take it away.