She needed a time spell, but she had to have the firefighters in her sights to do one. And they weren’t anywhere.
“Hello?” She ran past a series of empty rooms, including her own. At the end of the hall, she heard them laughing. In the workshop space Carter rented out. They were laughing?
Emma pushed through the double doors of the former gymnasium. The light scent of pine dust hit her nose. Four firefighters stood in the middle of Jack’s workshop. They were walking around like they’d stumbled into the Carnegie Art Museum. But Jack’s workshop wasn’t far from being art.
“Holy hell.” One of them had ducked his head into the Goldilocks playhouse Jack had been working on all week. It had a thatched roof, a rounded Dutch door with inset windows, rough sawn shutters that opened and closed, and the whole thing was half-size. The giant firefighter teetered on his knees with his full gear on his back, his head stuck into the play structure.
“Maddox, there’s no fire coming out of that chimney,” said the first one she had slid by. “Get the hell out of there.”
Emma glanced at him, or rather at the immaculate full brown mustache under his visor.
“Yes, chief.” Maddox pulled his shoulders out of the play structure.
“There’s no fire. I . . . I set off the alarm by . . . overheating my lunch.” Emma bounced side to side on her wet socks. She stunk at lying. Her stories crumbled like a sandcastle in the tide.
The chief stared at her, and she panicked. “What did you have for lunch?” he said slowly, like you would for a little child. When you didn’t know children and thought they weren’t bright. Two years ago, Emma had worked as a daycare worker for six months, one that specialized in young witches. She knew exactly how smart kids were, how quick, crafty, and clever kids were. Which was exactly why Emma didn’t work there anymore—because kids with magical powers added in were ruthless.
But Emma didn’t have an answer for his question. Slow or fast.
He’d asked a simple question, one she should be able to answer easily. So easily. She’d eaten lunch. She didn’t even have to lie, to come up with something. Granted, she’d had a cheese and lettuce sandwich, which would be an odd thing to heat up in the microwave, but not impossible. If there was a microwave in the building. Right now, there were only two people who worked in the building. And while there was a coffee pot, it was in a room not visible to non-witches. One she wasn’t going to point out to them.
Emma worked for tech mogul Carter Williams in his newest business, and she was supposed to be making something of it for him. Her. Everything landed on her. His computer programmers and data analysts couldn’t analyze if she didn’t give him the data. For now, she was working on her own. And in the meantime, one of her best friends on earth’s bear shifter husband was renting the wood shop and now gymnasium for his play-structure business. And normally he was here. But it was Saturday, and he and the guys who were working for him didn’t work.
The chief cleared his throat. “Lunch, miss. What did you have for lunch? Or rather, where is the stove?”
Emma blinked at him, swallowing hard. “Stove?”
“Did you set off the alarm with a microwave?” He tried to smile. She picked up on it, how the corner of his lip threatened to tip up. He was handsome too. In a rugged, older, fit professor way. Like he might teach Shakespeare or Yeats while making you do a ropes course. The wounded mattress that she’d kneed in the groin out front was hot in a different way altogether. Chief-professor Hot waved his hand in front of Emma’s face. “Maddox, check the carbon dioxide monitor.”
“It’s fine, chief.” The disembodied voice of Maddox carried over the top of the storybook cottage. “Nothing on the meter at all in here,” he said as he rounded the corner.
The three of them waited for her response.
“Do you want to show us to the kitchen area, miss?” the chief asked.
“The kitchen used to be over there behind where the Rapunzel tower is, Chief. At least, that’s where it was when I was in sixth grade. The last time I was in the building.” Beck nodded his head.
The chief tossed his hand up in the air. “I know that. I went here, too.”
“They had schools back then?” Maddox high-fived Beck. “Did you use feather quills or stone tablets?”
“The kitchen, miss?” The chief ignored his underlings.
Oh, she was fudging this up and fudging it up good. She needed to think. A flick of her hand, and the three of them froze. The two younger males were statues with their hands pulling back from a high-five. The chief had his hands on his hips, his lips fluffed out in the end of the “s” sound of miss.
She could make something up. Start a little fire in the corner? That wasn’t going to work. She needed them to go away, not prowl around anymore than they were already. Plus, they were shifters—she would give her witch card away if they weren’t. Not that there was a witch card to give away. “Think Emma.”
The door opened to the workshop. The door that shouldn’t have been able to open. Naturally, she’d spellbound the door at the same time as the room’s occupants. But the door opened.
“Chief. I’ve done a complete round . . .” Brown Eyes glanced around, a knowing look on his face, and tucked in his lower lip. “A witch. Just my fucking luck––only me.”
“What? How the? You’re not a witch. How . . .” Her thoughts stuttered. Again. Only a witch should have been able to open that door. She stared at him.
“No, I’m not a witch. I’m going back out that door, and when I open it, you’re going to wave your hand and unfreeze my crew.”
2
Flint Larsen’s day continued to get worse. His week, his month, his year. He slammed the door, but the door didn’t thud behind him, and that settled under his skin, adding to his horrible mood.
For the half minute before she’d kneed him in the balls, he’d been enjoying his day. He didn’t even care about the slush leaking down the neckline of his coat. A witch was exactly what he didn’t need. Didn’t want. The backstabbing, scheming, father-killing witches. They all needed to gather themselves up into a giant ball and vanish. And he included his mother in that lot.
He didn’t put his ear to the door but shouted again, “Chief, I’ve . . .” He opened the door. But Chief Ledger, Maddox, and Beckham didn’t budge, still frozen in place. A little breeze circled the room, wiggling the Chief’s mustache. Flint twisted his hands in front of him like he was passing out bread. “Witch. I said, ‘release them.”’
Wild, curly red hair cascaded down her back, and her blue eyes were wide, her lips thinned and pulled back. Flint had seen that look more than once on his sisters. In the older of the two twins, it meant duck. She was about to throw something at his head. For the younger twin, it was an alarm for waterworks. Tears made him flee—he’d rather be hit by a two by four. Emotions needed to happen on the inside, weighed down by years of baggage. At least, that’s how he did it. No, when the warm little witch had landed in his arms—before he’d discovered she was a witch—he’d pictured her doing something completely different to his balls than sticking her knee in them.
“Listen, shit,” he said. “You’re fine, you’re not in any trouble. False alarms go off all the time. All the time. No worries. I’ll go back out of the room, and this time, do your thing.”
“My thing?” Her lip trembled.
“Yeah. You know, your little hand wavy thing.”
“How come you can get through the spell?”
“Long story. It’s not worth telling.” It was long, all right. Long and frustrating and also all kinds of messed up. And if she dug far enough, she would know the whole story. Because the witch had to know who his aunt was. But if she didn’t, he didn’t need to tell her. What he didn’t need was the rest of his crew knowing the full context of his story. Flint and his sisters had managed to keep their little side-gene a secret from their wolf pack, even if his cousin hadn’t. Wolves and witches were enemies and had been for a long time. Long enough that they’d killed his dad. Cursed into his fur, his father had wandered off into the woods, forgetting he was anything but an animal.
“But my energy bled into you.”
“Indeed. I’d give it back, but . . .” But he didn’t know how. Intentionally, he knew nothing. Like how his baby sister never learned how to make coffee because she didn’t drink it and she didn’t want to have to make it for anyone. He wanted nothing to do with his magic.
