“Well then, you need to stick to the plan.” He jutted his jaw out at her.

She mimicked back. “Stick to the plan, then, sure, that’s easy. No problem. I’ll just stop making mistakes then. No mistakes, no smoke.”

“That’s fantastic. Do that.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh my Goddess.”

His shoulders shot up like she’d stabbed him in the back.

“I was joking. Truly, that alarm is going to blare daily, and while I want it not to, the simple truth is it will.”

He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Show me what you do.”

“What I do is none of your business.”

“I’ll just get the chief back in here to take a look at the electrical in the room, then.”

“I’ll just explain to the chief how you took power from me.”

“What power would that be?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Oh, fudge rockets.” She held in an exasperated cry. He had her. He had her well because if she explained to the chief that Mr. Cranky had taken her power, she would be outing herself as a witch. And they’d given her a direct order not to out herself to the people of Hundsburg. “I sit there, legs crossed, I say an incantation, and I gaze into the orange dot. And I get visions.”

He nodded. “And you do what with these visions? How is this even a business? Or is it a cult?”

So far, she did nothing with these visions, because again, she had yet to harvest a full one. But he wanted to know what she would do with one when she captured it, and that wasn’t something she wanted to share. Or could share with the NDA agreement she’d signed. “You worry yourself with fires, and I’ll do my job, too. And no, it’s not a cult.”

“Just try to keep our jobs from meeting anytime soon.”

“That’s a deal I’ll agree to.” She put her hand out for him to shake.

“Emma, you seem like a decent female, even if you are a witch. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

She didn’t know what she was doing. Being born a witch didn’t mean you could harness your power without practice. But that had never stopped her before. “Listen, whatever your name is . . .”

“Larsen.”

“All right, Larsen. You just take all your cranky, hot bossiness and head on out.” She didn’t need some male telling her she wasn’t enough. She’d had plenty of that her whole life from her mother on down.

His eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t mean––”

Emma glared at him.

He turned, took two steps toward the door, stopped, and looked back at her. When she said nothing, he slunk out of her white room. She huffed out a breath, her fists at her waist and tiptoed out on bare feet to check the hallway. Empty and she didn’t like it.

4

Flint trudged through the mud, snow, and weeds between the school and firehouse. Five years ago, before the town built the new school, this little path had been a gravel road. When the town put the building up for sale, they’d removed the gravel, and a year later the scrub brush had already taken over.

He’d picked up his gear. Yes, he could stop to put it on, but the stubborn side of him didn’t want to. No, instead he marched right past Beckham, Maddox, and the rest of the crew working on polishing up engine no. 2, into the firehouse and into the chief’s office.

The chief cocked his head at Flint, already hunched over a stack of papers on his desk. “Larsen, what’s crawled up your butt and died?” A coy smile flagged on the chief’s lips. “I’m guessing it’s one little Emma Davis. What ya find?”

“Nothing, a fried microwave. I had her throw it out. And told her not to use aluminum foil in the microwave next time.”

“And what did she say?”

“That she wouldn’t.” Flint had his hands on his hips. “We good here?”

“I don’t know. Are we?” The chief’s tone dripped with disbelief.

“What do you want to know?”

“What is she? And should we be concerned with what’s going on over there?”

“I don’t have any problems with the guy building Goldilocks’s homes. But if he wants to come down on wolf stereotypes of the three little pigs, then yeah, I guess we should be concerned.” Flint stared at the chief.

Chief Ledger put his elbows on his desk. “I don’t care what the bear builds. Well, I do because the second my sister sees that she’s going to want one, and that thing has to be expensive, which means my brother-in-law is going to try to build it and I’m going to get roped in to helping for the measly price of a bottle of troll ale. But no, what is Emma Davis, and what is she doing? I didn’t see any evidence of a microwave or a room that looked like she was working in it. But her scent is all over the building. She clearly goes there every day and has for a while.”

Flint shrugged. He believed in the tactic of letting people talk themselves out. The more they talked, the less he had to.

“And you don’t know what she is?” Ledger pushed up on his desk. His shoulders were as wide as Flint’s. They stood at the same height, only the chief had a lot more gray on his head.

“Human, maybe? She’s not a shifter. Not a wolf.” Flint put his hands in the pockets of his turndown pants and tugged the suspenders tight.

“Human?” The chief put the end of his pen in his mouth and chewed. “I don’t think so.”

“Does it matter? The place checks out.”

“Yeah, it matters. This is our town, Flint. Strangers coming in and buying our school . . . It’s wrong.”

“Chief, the school was for sale for six years. The town council listed the school on the market before the paint on the new one had dried. I heard the corporation that bought it was the first company that had any interest in it at all. And if they hadn’t bought it when they did, the town was going to have to pay to demolish it soon. No way that roof is going to last another winter. Hell, Maddox put his foot through it getting a ball back when we were in seventh grade. Be glad someone is putting it to good use.”

He wanted to tell the chief about little Emma getting the Excalibur-like window open, but that would mean he might go looking for it and the invisibility spell had it covered. So, best to keep his mouth shut.

“It’s not all bad. It got you to string more than three words together.” The chief sunk into his chair. “Not bad at all.”

Flint shook his head and left the chief’s office. He hung up his gear in his cubby. The scent of apples clung to his skin, and he pivoted to take off to the shower. He didn’t need the female, and smelling like her wasn’t going to help get her off his mind. Not in the least bit. He showered and dressed in his blue work uniform with a little under an hour to go before he was off for four days. He’d have to hold the power in. They had gotten into such a tiff that he’d stormed off with her power still deep in his bones.

“There he is, right when we’re about ready to finish for the night,” Beckham said with a laugh. “So glad you could join us.”

Flint raised one eyebrow at his cousin. It wasn’t his cousin who had done the majority of the cleaning around the firehouse this morning, because Beck hadn’t gotten out of bed. It took Chief Ledger smacking the side of Beck’s bunk for him to join them. Granted, Beck had taken point at a three-alarm fire over in Spring Ridge the night before. It had taken four tankers to put out the old barn fire. Luckily, no one got hurt, and while it had raged, it didn’t set the farmhouse alight. If Beck was human, he would have gone to the hospital for sure with smoke inhalation. The male was due a few extra minutes of sleep.

Flint grabbed a polishing chamois and attacked the engine. The place was spotless when the replacements for Beckham, Maddox, and Flint arrived. They changed into jeans and Hundsburg firehouse T’s and headed down the street to the Easy Rabbit.

Beckham was Flint’s cousin from his mother, and Maddox was Beckham’s cousin from their dads. But Flint and Maddox still referred to each other as cousins. They’d done everything together. Everyone had expected Flint to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and go to grad school, become a doctor like his brother. Everyone else might have expected it, but Flint never did. He liked his life at the firehouse and his cabin away from pack lands. It was close enough to keep him grounded and tethered to his cousin Spencer as alpha but far enough away that he didn’t have to deal with all the crap that had been clawing its way out of his family tree.

“I’m buying the first round.” Maddox slapped a twenty down on the counter.