The Witch Get Witcher

by Maeve Hart

  When the sun rose, I figured a shower would make me feel better. I opened the wardrobe to see an assortment of clothing. Most of the women’s clothing was small, but I found a pair of track pants and a tee shirt that looked like it might fit. I headed to the bathroom, hoping for a hot shower. The events of the previous day seemed a dim memory now.

  I let the hot jets of water flow down my back. The hot water helped, but I couldn’t relax completely. I was too on edge, as though my gut was warning me that something else was about to happen. I dried myself off and pulled on the clothes I’d found.

  Coffee would wake me up, I decided, and I headed to the kitchen hoping there was some. On my way, I peeped into Lewis’ bedroom to see him still fast asleep and snoring. I managed a smile, and headed for my morning fix. After searching all the cupboards, in the last one I found a coffee plunger and then found some ground coffee in the fridge. It was a little primitive, and nothing like my morning coffees that Jacques made me, but it was better than instant coffee. Soon I was sitting down, settling my nerves over a much-needed caffeine fix.

  Lewis staggered out of the bedroom and scratched his hair as he looked at me. “Was the water hot?”

  “Yes. I just had a shower.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Good. Any more of that coffee?”

  “Sure. I’ll make you one.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have a shower.”

  While he was in the bathroom, I started to worry about Abbie. The detective had been getting closer to her. What if he turned her, or was planning to and then she would be in the bad group of shifters? Or what if he killed her? I had to warn her to keep away from him if it wasn’t too late already.

  She had to be warned. I sneaked into Lewis’ room to use his phone. After a quick look around, I couldn’t see it anywhere and then I heard the water stop running. The mission had to be aborted. I’d look for his phone later. I ran out of the room and made Lewis’ coffee.

  He walked out of the bathroom wearing tight ripped jeans and a red shirt, rubbing his hair with a towel. I had to admit he was hot, but most of the shifter men were.

  “There’s your coffee,” I said, nodding my head toward it. “If it’s not hot enough I’ll make you another.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  After we both had two cups of coffee, he said, “We’ll need to buy some food. The safest thing is for you to come with me and stay in the car. I don’t think anyone should see you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll get some eggs, bread and some proper food,” he said.

  “That sounds like a good idea. And maybe some books or magazines since there’s no TV.”

  “I’ll see what they’ve got.”

  We got in the car and drove a little distance down the road to a general store. I stayed in the car as we’d arranged. My eyes fell to a cell phone he’d left in between the seats.

  I picked it up and dialed Abbie’s number.

  “Hello?” Abbie sounded confused, probably because she didn’t recognize the number.

  “Abbie, it’s me. I don’t have long to talk. I’m just calling to tell you not to trust the detective.”

  “Um, hello. How are you?”

  Dammit! The detective is right there in her house! I could tell by the way she was talking.

  CHAPTER 18

  “C an you hear me?” I asked Abbie.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t let on that you’re talking to me, but you must not trust him. Will you promise me that?” I kept my eyes fixed on the store Lewis was in and kept talking. “I found out some things about the detective and I can’t tell you what they are until I see you again, but you must trust me. Don’t see him again and if he’s there at your place right now, get him out as soon as possible.”

  “I think I can do that. Bye, Michelle.” Abbie ended the call.

  She’d done well. The detective wouldn’t have known it was me she was speaking with. I looked down at the phone and tried to figure out how I could delete that call off the list of recent calls on the phone. I managed to delete all signs of the conversation and then put the phone back in the exact position it’d been in.

  Lewis came back to the car with two newspapers under his arm and four large bags. I hoped the bags were full of food.

  He put the food in the back seat and then slid into the front. “That should do us for a while.”

  “It looks like it,” I said, looking at the bags.

  “I got you a few books.”

  “Good, thanks.”

  His gaze dropped to his phone. “You didn’t call anyone, did you?”

  “No!” I shook my head.

  “Did you?” he asked again, staring at me.

  I’d always been a bad liar. “I only called my friend. I had to warn her because she was getting close to Detective Andrews. He’s befriended her deliberately.”

  He picked up the phone and smashed it against the dashboard. And then he took out the SIM card and ripped it into pieces. “Now we have to keep moving.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He spoke through gritted teeth, “There’s a chance they could trace us now.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  He shook his head and mumbled, “I should’ve taken the phone with me into the store.”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out from the way his white knuckles gripped the steering wheel that he was angry. “But wasn’t that a safe phone?”

  “Yes, but if they know she’s your friend, her number would be traced and all incoming calls tracked.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “I didn’t think of that. I’m so stupid.” It was the lack of sleep. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Where will we go?”

  “Far away from here. We’ve got another safe house forty miles west. At least we’ve got food.”

  We stopped at another small house similar to the last one, with the exception that this one had a garage attached to the side of the house. Lewis opened the glove box and pressed a button and the garage door slowly opened. Once we were inside, lights came on and the garage door closed behind us.

  “There’s an internal door leading into the house.” He nodded to the doorway.

  I got out of the car and waited by the door. “You first,” I said, just in case there was danger inside.

  He took the shopping out of the car and headed into the house and I followed as he made his way into the kitchen.

  At first impression the house wasn’t too bad for what it was—a safe house in the middle of nowhere. “This house doesn’t smell as bad as the last one. It smells like lemon.”

  “That will be the lemon candles, I’m guessing.”

  I looked through an archway into the living room at a large tray of candles.

  It made me wonder who was here last. Eloise maybe? I still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of that one.

  Making myself useful and still feeling bad about us having to move houses, I helped him unpack the shopping. “I’m sorry I used the phone back there.”

  “Forget it.”

  “What will you do now without a phone?”

  “I’ll pick up another one from somewhere. Or there might be another one in the trunk of the car. I’ll check soon.”

  “I’ll make eggs for us, shall I?” It was a further attempt to make up for being an idiot. His face lit up so it must’ve worked, but then again, he didn’t know how bad I was in the kitchen.

  “Scrambled eggs and toast for me, thanks.”

  “Coming up.”

  He headed back out to the car.

  The thing was, I’d do it all over again—call Abbie. I had to protect her. It was through knowing me that she’d become involved with the detective.

  As I whisked the eggs, I remembered what Jacques said about my ring, or rather the diamond in my ring, keeping me safe. Maybe I’d misheard him. I held the ring up to the light coming in through the kitchen window and looked at the diamond. I was mesmerized by the different colors of the rainbow ref
lected through the diamond bouncing around the facets and bouncing back out. I resumed whisking the eggs when I heard Lewis returning.

  “Did you find one?” I asked, seeing something in his hands.

  “I did.”

  “It’s all right. I won’t call anyone.”

  “You better not, or we’ll both be in danger.”

  “How will Jacques know where to find us now that we’ve moved?”

  He sat down on the couch. “He’ll know.”

  I managed to make the breakfast without burning the place down and without even burning the toast. I was quite proud of myself because normally I set off smoke alarms when I cooked. After I had arranged the triangle portions of toast, I spooned the scrambled eggs into the center.

  “There you go.” I placed the eggs and toast on the coffee table in front of Lewis.

  “Thank you. It looks good. You having some?”

  “Yes.” I got my eggs and sat down with him. “So, these safe houses have been used before?”

  “Yes, they have over the years. We haven’t needed to use them for some time.”

  Since he was answering questions I slipped another one in. “Who is the Eloise woman Kylie keeps talking about?”

  He finished chewing the food he’d just piled into his mouth. “Eloise was a friend of Jacques’ uncle. One of the shifters in The Light killed her.”

  I gasped. “Shifters kill each other?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. I never thought shifters would kill one another.” My thoughts turned to Abbie and the detective.

  “You see? We’re not safe from humans and we’re not even safe from each other.”

  “Do you think everyone in the pack is trustworthy?”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  I was relieved to hear it. I trusted Lewis and if he thought everyone in the pack was okay, I had to believe his brother and Kylie were okay, deep down anyway.

  Glancing at the huge diamond in my ring, I wanted to ask him how it would keep me safe, but Jacques had said that in a low voice so I wasn’t certain if I should mention it to Lewis. If Jacques was right, I had the ring keeping me safe and Lewis keeping me safe, but who was looking after Abbie? I had to tell her the truth of what was happening.

  “If the police haven’t got Jacques, when will we see him again?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Days or maybe weeks. Depending where he is and what’s happened. He’s got systems in place. That’s why we knew ahead of time they were on the way.”

  “The security drones saw the police coming?”

  “Yes. They spotted them first and they triggered the alarms.”

  “Who triggered the alarms?”

  “The men in the control room who monitor everything.”

  There was so much I didn’t know.

  Lewis either read my thoughts or the expression on my face. “I’m sure he’ll tell you everything in time.”

  THAT NIGHT when Lewis was asleep, I knew I had to get to Abbie and warn her properly. I crept out of my bedroom, took hold of the car keys, and stepped into the garage, closing the internal door leading into the garage behind me. As quietly as I could, I switched the garage door to manual and lifted the door. Then I slipped into the car and released the handbrake. The car slid slowly backwards down the driveway. Once I was clear of the house, I braked, put the handbrake on, got out, and locked the garage door.

  I slid back into the driver’s seat and started the engine, hoping it wouldn’t wake Lewis. When I was up the road, well clear of the house, I switched on the headlights.

  Having no idea where I was or how to get to Abbie’s, I moved off the road and stopped so I could program her address into the GPS.

  Suddenly, a large dark figure jumped beside the car and I screamed.

  CHAPTER 19

  I jumped out of the car, still screaming when the passenger door opened and a man got in. Somewhere between me getting out and the man getting in, I realized it was Lewis.

  “Only me,” he said, out of breath.

  Settling back into the driver’s seat, I stared at him. I could see by the light of a nearby streetlight how flushed his face was. He shook his head at me and I could only stare at him in disbelief.

  “You should really keep the car doors locked,” he gasped.

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I’m a fast runner.” He took another breath. “I heard the car start.” He wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. “Where are we off to?” he asked.

  “We?” I was surprised he wasn’t ordering me to go back to the safe house.

  “You must want to go somewhere pretty bad.” He dried his forehead again with the back of his arm.

  “I need to warn my friend, Abbie.” I told him everything—the whole story about the detective and Donald and how Donald was working with the detective to get information from me about my grandmother, and the Alpha that my grandmother killed. I ended with, “And now he’s getting close to Abbie. And Abbie already had a boyfriend and he was such a nice person and now the detective’s moving in on her to get at Jacques and me.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned on the engine and we headed to Abbie’s house.

  “How much of that did you already know?” I asked, glancing at him.

  “I knew the detective was on our trail, and Jacques’ grandfather was killed by a witch, but I didn’t know she was your grandmother. And I didn’t know about your old boyfriend. I’m sorry he was murdered.”

  Fixing my gaze dead ahead, I said, “He wasn’t the nicest person in the world.”

  “Why were you gonna marry him, then?”

  I sighed. “I’ve learned it’s a common question asked of women in abusive relationships. You have to be in one to understand it. It’s a cycle. Sometimes the abuser is nice and you see signs of them improving. I thought it was easier to stay with someone whose past I knew rather than start getting to know someone new when I knew nothing about their past. I know it probably sounds stupid.”

  He chuckled. “Better the devil you know?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did your therapist tell you all this?”

  “No. I got all the information from the Internet.”

  “What are you going to say to your friend? Does she know you’re a shifter?”

  “No, it was enough for her to take in that my family members were all witches. Will the pack drive me out, do you think, now that they’ll know it was my grandmother who killed the Alpha?”

  “Not if they don’t know.”

  “You won’t tell?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, Lewis.” I was starting to see why Jacques trusted him so much.

  When we got to Abbie’s street, I was pleased the detective’s car was nowhere in sight, and neither was Steve’s car.

  “You stay here while I talk to Abbie.” I got out of the car.

  He jumped out too. “No, Jacques said not to let you out of my sight.”

  “I don’t remember him saying that.”

  “It’s true. He did.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Before we got to Abbie’s door, Lewis put out his hand for the car keys. Once I handed them over, he slipped them into his pocket. I knocked on Abbie’s door, hoping like hell she was home.

  She opened the door, surprised to see me. “Destiny!” Then her gaze moved to Lewis.

  “Can we come in?”

  She was wrapping a pale blue dressing gown around herself and her hair was all over the place. “Sure.”

  “Are you here alone?” I asked her.

  “Yes.” She stepped back to let us through.

  On my way past her, I said, “This is Lewis.”

  Abbie gave him a bright smile and smoothed down her hair. “Hi, Lewis.”

  As soon as Abbie shut the door, I sat down on the couch and waited for her to sit.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you. Have you seen anything of the detective lately?”

  “Yes.” She looked at Lewis.

  “It’s okay; he’s a good friend. You can talk freely in front of him. He knows everything.”

  “About what?”

  “About what I’m about to tell you. You’ll think it’s strange, but you have to believe me that it’s all true. You can’t trust the detective. Where’s Steve?”

  “He left two days ago and he’ll be gone for two weeks with work. I told you he was going away.”

  “I have trouble remembering what I’m doing, let alone what anyone else is doing.” I shook my head. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “You’re worrying me, and what was that phone call all about this morning?”

  “I’ll start at the beginning.” Reluctantly, I told her everything: about me becoming a shifter, about the pack and about Jacques. Then once her eyes glazed over, I told her Detective Andrews belonged to the bad shifter group, The Light.

  “And you think the detective was using me to get to you?”

  “Do you believe everything I just told you?”

  Abbie nodded. “I do. You’ve told me and I’ve seen for myself how your grandmother’s spells work, and I’ve always believed in the supernatural.”

  Relief flooded through my body. If someone had told me what I’d just told her, I wouldn’t believe it. “To answer your question, he is using you. He might think you know something or he might be following you. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I don’t like it.”

  “Not that he wouldn’t normally be attracted to you, of course,” Lewis added, which made Abbie happy.

  Was Lewis flirting with Abbie? Pushing that out of my mind, I asked, “Has he ever asked anything about me or Jacques?”

  “He asked where you lived and I said you lived in the loft apartment. And then he told me that you didn’t live there and accused me of lying to him. And then we had a falling out, and before that he asked me about Jacques as well.”

  “When was that?”

  Abbie looked away. I knew he’d been here at the house not long ago. Don’t ask me how; I just knew it. Now staring at Lewis, I wondered what our next move should be. When we heard a car in the normally quiet street, Abbie leaped to her feet and peeped out the window. “He’s back. It’s Logan.”