Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

W e ate lunch then Ronan offered to clean up, but there was barely enough room for me to move around in the trailer, so I let him give me a rain check.

"Want to tell me why you stopped by today?" I ran soapy water in the sink and dunked our dishes into the suds. "Or was it just to nail down the friends-vs-more thing?"

"That was a bonus." His gaze followed me as I worked. "I'm actually here about the cursed book. Alpha wants to attend the official handoff of the Weret-hekau Maleficium . Assuming you haven't yet acquired it?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. Soon."

"When?"

I stacked the wet dishes on a wooden board I placed atop the range. My makeshift drying rack. "Tomorrow night."

"What time? Where? Here?"

I dragged my teeth over my lower lip as I strategized about how much to tell him. This was going to be tricky enough without a bunch of wolves underfoot.

"We need to be there, Betty," Ronan said. "It'll benefit you, too. We'll be able to protect you."

The look I gave him made him sigh. "Oh yeah, Ronan, because when I think about Alpha Floyd the word protection comes directly to mind."

"What about when you think about me?"

"You?"

"Yeah." His grin matched his tone. Low, warm, and sexy. "What word comes to mind when you think about me?"

I hoped the man did not have the ability to read minds, because not one answer that popped into my head was below an R-rating.

Ronan slid down the bench seat and rose, coming up behind me. His fingers grazed my outer thigh as he reached around me for a dish towel. A bead of sweat formed between my shoulder blades and trickled slowly down my spine.

He picked up a glass and dried it. "Well?"

"Wolf," I said, quickly. "Friend." I tried that one on for size, and it didn't feel genuine, so I added, " Trusted friend."

"You trust me?" His voice tickled my ear. I didn't even try to hide my shiver.

"As much as I trust anyone from the pack," I said, without thinking.

Winter blew into his expression, frosting his words. "I am more than my pack."

Although I regretted the temperature change in the room, I hadn't been lying. "Your first responsibility will always be to the Pallás wolves. Just as if I were part of a coven, I'd be expected to give my first allegiance to them. It is what it is."

He didn't say I was wrong, but he didn't outright agree, either. "Is that why you don't join the coven here? You don't want to commit to any— thing ?"

Had he been about to say any one ?

Our gazes connected and, for a second, I caught a glimpse of the man I'd met a couple of years ago in his pub. A man I'd instantly liked during a time when I'd hated the whole world except for Ida and Fennel.

He broke the stare first, returning his focus to drying the other iced tea glass.

"I don't join the coven here for two reasons." I scrubbed the peanut butter knife until it was shiny clean. "One, I don't plan to make this place my permanent home. Locking myself into a coven would complicate my eventual exit."

He didn't speak for a long moment. Finally, he asked, "No luck finding a buyer?"

"There haven't been a ton of offers, which isn't surprising. It'd take a very specific sort of magical to want to run a senior paranormal trailer park in a small town smack in the middle of the sweltering low desert in Nowhere, California," I drawled.

"Hey, we're not nowhere. We're somewhere. Just somewhere excruciatingly hot from late May to October. Once you're clear of those months, it's nice here."

"Well, sure. If you don't count the last half of spring up until the middle of fall, we're great," I said, and we both laughed. "On the subject, though, a mage who found my contact information at Beau's called yesterday to set up a time to take a look at the place. If he resonates with the soil well enough, it might work. We'll see."

"Beau's Oddities? The head shop on Main? You posted an ad on Stoner Beau's bulletin board?"

"Yeah. The shop's more than bongs and rolling paper, you know. Beau's got his fingers in a lot of pies."

Ronan grimaced. "I'm going to go ahead and not think about Stoner Beau's fingers in pies, if it's all the same to you."

I would've corrected Ronan on the nickname, but I'd heard Beau refer to himself as Stoner Beau a few times, so it must not have bothered him. Knowing Beau, he'd purposely cultivated the image of himself as a clueless pothead. People would discount "Stoner Beau the head shop owner," where they might take a closer look at "Beau Glazier, dealer in rare paranormal books and artifacts."

"Resonates with the soil," Ronan said, circling back to what I'd said before. "Why is that important?"

"It's how the ward protecting the park is grounded. Mom wanted a place where elder paranormals could live out the rest of their days safely, without being hassled by their pasts." I set the last plate on the cutting board and let the soapy water drain out of the sink. "She tied her spells into the land and the saguaros—and before you ask, I don't know why she did it like that. If she'd used any other sort of magic, handing this place off to another magical would've been much easier."

"Maybe it was to keep you here," he said.

"I doubt it. Mom spent my formative years preparing me to be a travel witch. Lennox witches have always been nomads. We go where we're needed."

"The nomad life can be lonely." The way he said it made me think he spoke from experience.

I shrugged. "It's just how we've always done things."

"Yet your lineage continues. How do you witches manage to have families with all that traveling?" He finished drying the dishes and rested a hip against my mini fridge while I put them away.

"We don't. I don't know my father, and he doesn't know I exist," I said matter-of-factly. "Mom was a traveling witch when I was born. She didn't stop traveling until I was able to take over. As I said, it's just how we've always done things—Lennox witches, I mean."

As if I'd cued it up myself, the opening strains of "When Will I See You Again," a sultry song by The Three Degrees played on the radio.

"You haven't been traveling lately," he said.

"Not this month, but I was in Arizona all of January. New Mexico and parts of Texas in November."

"And that's what you want?"

"It's what's expected of me." I placed the clean glasses in the cabinet above the fridge.

"By whom?" Ronan looked around as if searching for someone. "I don't mean to be harsh, but there's no one left to expect anything of you."

He wasn't wrong. I was the last living Lennox witch. It was up to me to keep the line going—if I chose to. If not, our magic would end with me.

"My ancestors," I replied.

"Figures." Ronan scowled. "It's always family." The frost that had thawed in his gaze blew back in with a vengeance. His expression went from mild northwest snow flurries to North Pole arctic tundra.

"Yeah," I said.

"What's the second reason? You only told me one."

"Huh?" I mentally backtracked over our conversation.

"The second reason you won't join the coven in town. You said there were two reasons, and you only gave me one."

My hand trembled as I put away the dish drying rack. "Because those cowardly witches were complicit in my mom's death. As far as I'm concerned, they had a hand in it."

Ronan's gaze lost its coldness. "Are you saying she was murdered by the coven?"

"No, not murdered. Not like you're thinking." I backed up until my ass hit the edge of the dining table. "Mom called me the night she died. She was going to do a spell that might knock her out for a couple of days and I wasn't to worry if I couldn't reach her."

" Knock her out ? Is that normal?"

"It's not ab normal, but it's not something that happens a lot." I picked at the flaking black polish on my nails. "Casting a strong spell can knock a witch out for anything from a few minutes to a few days. It's not the everyday norm, but it happens."

"But you didn't think it was normal, did you?" Ronan asked.

I shook my head, long strands of dark brown hair coming loose from my braid. "There was something in her voice I didn't like. Something off."

Ronan watched me intently, said nothing.

"When she told me how much the spell was going to take out of her, I told her to wait for me. Two witches can carry a heavier burden than one, and her recovery time wouldn't be as severe. I told her I could be there in a matter of hours. She assured me she was fine and didn't require any help."

"So you let it go? Trusted her to be able to handle the spell on her own?" His tone was gently inquisitive, not accusatory. Kind.

"No, I didn't trust her to handle it. I dropped everything, hitched the Airstream to my Jeep and drove straight home." My voice quavered. "I was too far away. I didn't make it in time."

I cleared the tremble from my throat, mentally calmed myself.

"Before I left, I called the coven mother, Margaux Ramirez, and asked her to check on Mom. They'd been friends for several years, and I knew Mom had helped Margaux with a few spells now and then."

"What happened?"

"Margaux refused. Said it was too dangerous for the coven to get involved." My throat tightened with suppressed sorrow. "Mom died an hour before I got here. Margaux could've prevented it—even if she didn't want to help with magic, she could've come over and tried to talk her out of it. Distracted her until I could get here. But she didn't, and Mom died."

"What about the other tenants in the park?" Ronan asked. "Why couldn't one of them help?"

"I tried to call every single one, but they were all attending Barbara Berry's funeral service. She'd been a tenant here for years, and everyone except Mom had gone. They had their cell phones switched off."

Ronan listened, nodded. "Do you think your mom chose that night to do the spell because they were gone?"

"Yeah. It fits. She was protective of her tenants. If everyone was away and the spell backfired, it would only kill her. As it did." I sank onto the bench seat.

"I'm sorry, Betty."

"Thanks. People in town know what happened because our community is a small one and Mom was respected here, but I don't talk about it much. In fact, I've never told anyone all that—except Ida and Fennel."

"Thank you for trusting me."

I did trust him. More than I'd let on earlier.

Or maybe I was getting lust and trust mixed up. Gods knew I'd made that mistake before.

Ronan lowered himself onto the seat across from me and clasped his hands on the table. "I'm not trying to be pushy—or maybe I am, hell. But I need to be there when you make the book exchange. My father's demanding it."

"Of course he is," I said.

"Do you blame him? There isn't a lot of trust between you."

Anger pulsed through me. "He's not a trustworthy person. Sorry, Ronan, I know he's your father and the alpha of your pack, but he's not a good person."

He stared down at his hands, nodded solemnly. "At this point I should just get a shirt that says, You're preaching to the choir, folks . I get it, Betty. Maybe better than most."

"Do you? Has he told you our history?"

"His version." He folded his arms over his chest. "I'd like to hear your side."

"You're talking about Floyd's wolf-killer comment last Tuesday, right? You want the real story, not the sanitized one your father told you?"

"Sanitized isn't the word. He blames you for killing one of his betas. He says your guilt is why you hound him."

"Of course he does." I muttered a few Spanish curse words under my breath. "The truth makes him look like what he is. A low-grade piece of mierda."

"As I said, I'd like to hear your side." He searched my face with his gaze. "If you want to tell it."

Want? No. But maybe it would be good for me to get my side of the story out into the world, or rather, into the pack.

"I was hired by a shifter friend to help her father, a beta wolf in the Pallás pack. Back then I was still working my mom's travel route, and she was a client of my mom's. Both were beta wolves, but her father was very weak. His shift was painful even with the help of an alpha wolf. Only someone at the level of your father, Mason Hartman, or you would've been able to change him without terrible pain."

Ronan's face went slack. It was as if he knew where this story was headed.

"Mom and I came up with a charm he could wear to help with the worst of the pain. She crafted it, and I spelled it. With it, he could shift without pain when even a weaker alpha helped out. It was an answer to a prayer he'd hadn't dared voice, he told me." My chest tightened, my throat following suit. "He decided to try shifting on his own, with only the spell to assist."

"Goddess of the moon," Ronan whispered.

"His daughter called me, hysterical. The scene when I arrived was something out of a horror movie. Things that should've been on the inside were on the outside. His spine had cracked in so many places, it looked like a jigsaw puzzle from Hell. There was so much blood—it even dripped from the ceiling… The way he screamed will stay with me forever." I shivered. "We called Alpha Pallás. Begged him to come."

"He didn't come to the aid of his wolf?" Ronan's eyes were like a sustained camera flash. Blinding, brilliant gold.

"He came. Two fucking hours later." I pressed my palms to the table to steady my hands, hoping it would extend to my voice, which was now shaking with rage. "He strolled in like a spoiled king being forced to acknowledge his lowly subjects. Took one look at my client's suffering father then nodded to his second alpha, who shrugged and told the fourth alpha to ‘see to it.' Then they walked out."

"Fourth alpha. Was that Jade Walker?"

I nodded. "She'd just been appointed to the security team. To her credit, Jade tried hard to help, but it was too late. By the time your father and his security team deigned to make an appearance, the beta wolf was already more dead than alive. Jade collapsed from exhaustion, and my client begged me to end his suffering." I clenched my hands into fists. "So I killed him."

"In the pack, we call that mercy."

"Your pack had no mercy for that wolf. Not back then and not now."

Ronan went dead silent. The radio switched songs twice, but I barely registered the music.

"That's why you took those blackmail photos of the alpha. So you'd have a way to ensure he never did that to another of his wolves again. That's why you need the leverage."

He was partly correct about the leverage, but incorrect about the blackmail pics. I hadn't taken them. His own wolves had. My client had given them to me when she left the pack. Told me that while she didn't blame me for what happened to her father, she felt I owed him. That I could repay them both by keeping Alpha Floyd in line.

"One day I'll bring him down. And when I do, he'll know it was because he was such a callous bastard to my client." I released my fists, took a long deep breath.

Ronan reached for my relaxed hands, gently twining his fingers with mine. "Why don't you use the wolves' names? You only refer to them as your client and her father."

"Client information is confidential. I don't break confidentiality—not even after death." And not when the client herself was still alive and could be hunted down and killed for what she'd done.

He went silent again, staying that way for the duration of another song. This time I was aware of the music. "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers. Too optimistic of a song for the moment.

"I'm glad he kicked his old security team out of the pack last year. Even if Jade helped, she was as bad as the others in myriad ways," Ronan growled. His eyes had gone back to normal, and there was a sorrow in their hazel depths that matched the sadness in me.

"Yeah," I said. "Not sure Mason Hartman is much better."

"That's because he's not."

"Ronan, you could?—"

"And you could stay here and take care of your park," he said.

It stung, but it was fair. We could both do a lot of things we weren't doing. Neither of us had the right to call the other out.

I sighed, pulled my hands out of his, and slid out from behind my table. "Tell Alpha Floyd I'm doing the handoff with the bookseller at midnight Sunday night in the parking lot. If he brings any wolves with him besides you, we're going to have a problem. Otherwise, he has my express permission to enter that part of my property, and that part only."

"Thanks, Betty." He stood, too. "For everything."

"You're welcome."

He nodded grimly and reached for the door.

"Oh, and Ronan?" A smile tugged one side of my mouth. "Tell him I said to bring a crucifix."