by Anya Breton
She threw open the door, preparing to snarl at the weretiger. The sight on the porch stunned her into silence.
Kari. Gaunt and thin, hanging from Dion’s massive arms.
Sam burst into tears. “Is she…”
“She’s alive,” he assured her in a low, soothing fashion. “Just sleeping. Possibly drugged. Can I come in?”
Could he come in? What a stupid question. Kari was in his arms!
Flushing when she noticed she was blocking the entrance, Sam scrambled back so he could pass through.
“Where is her room?”
Sam gestured at the arched door across the space. “Through there. Second door on the right.”
Dion’s frame filled the corridor as Sam dogged his heels on the trip to her sister’s room. She mashed her fingers between her teeth. Kari’s return should have eased Sam’s nerves. But the opposite was true.
What had happened to her sister? Why was she unconscious?
He gently nudged the door open with his shoulder and then ducked within. The mess of dirty clothes and scattered beauty products made Sam wince. At least she’d cleaned the bed off yesterday.
Sam nibbled at her nails as he carefully set her sister atop the bed. The gangster paused to cover the snoozing girl with a soft, hot-pink blanket, tucking the edges beneath her gently to avoid waking her.
She wanted to shake her sister awake, to demand what had happened, but the dark circles under her sister’s eyes kept her mum.
Dion turned, catching her staring at Kari’s gaunt form. “She just needs to sleep it off. Tomorrow we can find out what happened,” he whispered.
He shooed her out as if he owned the place. This time he didn’t. But she’d do as he’d silently suggested. If only to see him out.
Dion waited until they reached the empty living room to tell her what she was chomping at the bit to hear. He settled against the man-shaped dent, proving whoever had taken Kari was puny in comparison to his considerable bulk.
“I found her with a weaver named Dale Vere,” he began. “He acted like they were lovers. I punched him out before I could find out for sure. My Water witch interrogator hasn’t answered his phone. But it’s early. I’m sure I’ll be able to get him when he wakes up.”
“She’s back. Safe. That’s all I care about.” The moment the words left Sam’s lips, she knew they were false.
“That’s all?” Dion echoed in disbelief. “You don’t care if your sister was drained and that’s why she’s unconscious?”
“Of course I care about that,” Sam grumbled uncomfortably. She didn’t like him in her living room, witnessing her inability to reason while he was around. “But she’s alive. It could have been so much worse.”
“She’s alive but we don’t know what state she’s in.”
His words made Sam feel twice as stupid. He was right. Kari could be in a coma. There was little cause for celebration yet.
“I’ve called a Healer,” the weretiger announced. “He’ll be here soon.”
A Water witch interrogator. And a Healer. He had everything covered. Sam couldn’t help but feel useless. “Thank you,” she whispered as moisture built in her eyes.
“All part of the package deal.”
Sam speared him with an angry look only to find him staring back with a dark and ravenous intensity. Her breath caught in her throat. Dear Aer, what had she agreed to?
“My Gamma Kevin will be outside,” he told her as he moved to the door. “In case Dale wasn’t working alone.” Dion swiveled until he could see her out of a single eye. “You could be polite and invite him inside.”
He opened the door and then stepped through without a mention of the payment he was owed. Surely he’d gone out to give his man orders and would be back.
An engine roared to life followed by the crunch of tires over stray pebbles from the landscaping. He wasn’t coming back? Sam peeked out as the heavy vehicle backed into the street. He wasn’t coming back.
She’d gotten off easily. This time.
Sam headed onto the porch to find Kevin. It would be little hardship to show the weretiger Gamma some Avira hospitality.
* * * * *
Sam didn’t know how to feel about the stranger in her house. While Kevin’s supposed task was to protect Kari from any potential accomplices, he was no doubt reporting everything he observed to his Alpha.
She’d put the Gamma in the guest room after putting fresh sheets on the bed. He’d insisted he didn’t need a bed because he was meant to be on guard. But Sam pointed out they no longer had a sofa. There also hadn’t been a television in the living room since the old one died. Kevin would have nothing to pass the time with but whatever he’d brought and he’d have to do it on a wooden floor…unless he accepted the guest bed.
He’d accepted the guest bed.
Sam hadn’t heard a peep out of him all night apart from the occasional shifting on the creaky box spring. Not long after the sun rose, Kevin peeked around the door to Kari’s bedroom. Sam set her finger to her lips as she rose from the floor to see what he wanted.
He remained quiet until she joined him in the hall. Kevin’s skin went pink as he shuffled his feet almost nervously. At a whispered volume, he asked, “Sorry to bug you. But can I use your restroom?”
Oh Aer! The poor guy. She was the worst kind of host.
“Of course,” she whispered back. “It’s this way.”
“Thanks.”
His sincere gratitude made her skin flush in embarrassment. To make up for her failure to properly show her guest around, Sam would start a pot of coffee. She’d need the caffeine to stay awake in any case.
Sam quietly called to him after the water in the bathroom cut off. “Do you want some coffee?”
“You don’t have to go to the trouble,” the weretiger argued. He settled against the far counter, barely inside the kitchen.
Was he waiting for her to invite him into the kitchen too? It seemed strange someone like Dion Hebert would have a third in command as nervous as this guy clearly was. But it was also…endearing.
“I’m already making some for myself,” she assured him with as much of a smile as she could manage given the worries over her unconscious sister in the other room. “It’ll be a few minutes but there will be more than enough to share.”
“In that case, sure. I’d love some coffee. Thanks.”
“How about some cereal or toast?” When Kevin’s eyes lit up at the mention of food, Sam added, “Or both?”
“Cereal sounds great. Thank you.”
She grabbed a loaf of bread to make toast despite his answer. Kevin seemed the type to pick the option he thought was easiest on his host. Given the service he’d provided all night, plus her failure to show him the facilities, Kevin deserved his cereal and toast.
Harboring a gangster’s minion wasn’t a hardship. How could it be when the minion was so polite?
Too bad his boss hadn’t learned anything from his underling.
Chapter Five
A rasping inhalation echoed through the air. Sam’s head shot up from her book. She flailed an arm into the pile of discarded shoes on the floor beside her. An instant later, she was on her feet and to the edge of the bed. Her hands hovered over the supine figure stretched out beneath the soft blanket.
The Healer Dion sent had claimed Kari was merely unconscious, perhaps drugged to sleep. There’d been no wounds or concussions for the Healer to fix. Nonetheless, Sam had worried all night. That wouldn’t change until she was able to talk to her sister.
“Kari,” Sam whispered to keep from frightening her.
“Sam?”
She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “It’s me, sweetie. Are you okay?”
“Where am I?”
“Your bedroom. At home.”
“Oh,” was the girl’s dull response.
The strange, almost disappointed quality to her sister’s voice made Sam drag her hands back to her sides. Stiffly, she stood away
from the bed to give Kari space. But she couldn’t hold her tongue. “What happened, Kari?”
“I don’t remember.” The answer came too fast, as though the girl hadn’t attempted to recall anything. Or as though she was lying.
Sam wanted to grab her sister by the shoulders and shake her. Instead, she forced herself to the door. “I’ll go make us some cinnamon buns for breakfast,” she said at the frame. “Come out when you’re up to it.”
Perhaps she should have said something different, maybe a command to come out soon. Her sister didn’t appear while Sam worked on arranging the refrigerated dough. Nor did Kari join her when the alarm buzzed. The scent of sweet cinnamon and decadent icing didn’t draw her sister out as it always had when they were kids. It was worrying.
Sam put one of the baked treats on a plate, grabbed a fork and a napkin and then set off to her sister’s room. She halted when she spotted Kari upright and fully dressed, with elaborate makeup coating her once-haggard complexion. The younger woman stood, sliding post earrings into her pale lobes.
“I can’t eat that.” Kari avoided her gaze in the mirror above the vanity. “It’s like a thousand calories.”
“Where are you going? School?” Sam demanded in a voice shaking with fear and anger.
“Out,” Kari replied.
Anger dominated, sharpening Sam’s voice. “You can’t go out unless you’re going to school.”
Kari turned from her mirror to give her sister an impatient look tinged with disgust. “I’m eighteen now. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Sam’s jaw dropped open. She barely held on to the ceramic plate. “Do you have any idea what I had to go through to rescue you?”
“Thanks,” Kari muttered begrudgingly, again avoiding her sister’s gaze as she pivoted to the mirror. “But I’m not sticking around here. It’s too depressing and I need to get the money he promised me.”
Had Sam been shocked a moment ago? This news was twice as bad. “You agreed to go with the weaver?” Sam finally spied a tiny bit of shame on Kari’s face. The flush now visible in Kari’s cheeks was from mortification, wasn’t it?
“I agreed to sacrifice some of my power to the weaver for money,” Kari admitted. “But negotiation kind of…broke down. He wanted more than I wanted to give. So he took me.”
Maybe that wasn’t mortification. “And you want to go back?”
“I need the money,” Kari insisted with a lifting pitch.
Sam clenched her teeth in fury. She barely relaxed them to ask, “What do you need money for?”
Her sister shot another impatient look over her shoulder, this one mutinous. “To pay for a trip to New York and an apartment once I’m there.” Kari started forward before Sam could exclaim about the foolishness of the idea. “He owes me money. I need to get it.”
“No!” Sam snapped. “I don’t want you going there alone.”
“You can’t—”
“He’s not at his place. I know how to find him. Let me make a call.”
Given Kari’s behavior, it was surprising she didn’t refuse. But it did give Sam a few minutes to put the sweet rolls away and gather herself. And then she had to call the one person she wasn’t ready to talk to.
* * * * *
The voice hovering in Dion’s ear was sexy even over the phone. He was glad he’d decided to answer the unrecognized the number. But the stilted quality to Sam’s delivery didn’t bode well.
“I have him,” Dion told her of the spellweaver she’d asked after. “Why?”
She inhaled a breath through her nose, one that sounded frustrated. “My sister says he owes her money.”
“For what?”
There was no response at first. Dion found it difficult to remain patient with her. Somehow he managed not to demand she reply.
Another long sigh preceded her answer. “She planned to sell her magic to fund her trip to New York. But she said the weaver wanted too much from her. So he took her.”
Dion had yet to get that out of the guy. His Water witch interrogator had been in the neighboring state. Though the witch was en route, it would still be another hour before they’d get their answers. Carefully, he replied, “I’m sorry, Samantha.”
He’d not expected her choked response. Was she about to break down? He grabbed hold of an armrest to keep from moving. Where he’d go, he didn’t know.
The witch-with-the-tits proved she was made of stronger stuff when she sniffed a single time and then surged onto the next topic. “Kari wants her money. I think she deserves it.”
“She does,” Dion agreed. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
If he had to pay it out of pocket. But then…the witch would blame him when her little sister took off to the Big Apple. Maybe he’d stay out of it.
“What’s going to happen to him?” The thread of ice running through Sam’s words made him consider how to answer. Clearly she wanted the weaver to pay for what he’d done.
But there was also the issue of her seeing Dion as an odious man. Ordinarily he dismissed the opinions of others. With her…he didn’t want to disappoint her. He wished to hell he knew why. “What do you think should happen to him?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied, far too fast to have given the question much thought. “He kidnapped my sister. But…”
But her sister had been in the process of making an illegal deal with the guy in the first place. Dion didn’t speak the words he knew they were both thinking.
“He should be handed over to the authorities,” Sam said at last. “What he’s doing is illegal.”
Illegal according to her community. Dion didn’t dare begin the familiar debate. He’d helped a few spellweavers avoid punishment. But the ones he helped always provided the service to consenting witches. This situation hadn’t been consensual.
“Of course,” he told her. “But what if he tells the Rangers about his clients?”
Dion couldn’t hear her breathing then. She was holding it in. Had she forgotten it was every bit as illegal for a witch to offer magic to a spellweaver as it was for one to take it?
“He kidnapped her,” Sam insisted. “Priest Zephyr will understand.”
Dion hoped she was right.
* * * * *
The hardest thing Sam had ever done was watch her sister walk out of the house after the kidnapping. There’d been no book bag on her sister’s shoulder. Kari probably wasn’t going to school.
At least Sam had persuaded her not to go after the spellweaver. That was small consolation. Especially when Kari gave her little more than a stiff hug before she raced off with her purse and cell phone in tow.
Kevin had been close on her heels. He’d been smart to hide in the guest room while Kari strutted around the house getting ready. The young witch would have no idea a weretiger stalked her for her own good.
Sam took a long shower meant to soothe her anger and dismay. It did neither. She needed a distraction to put her helplessness out of her mind. Maybe shopping at the food-service supply store would do the trick.
An hour and a set of paring knives later, Sam felt no better. She grabbed a sandwich at her favorite deli and then headed off for an afternoon appointment regarding catering a wedding reception. The clients signed on the dotted line, ensuring Sam a prosperous deal come autumn. But even their praise of the food they’d eaten at a friend’s wedding did little to help her funk.
She grew worried when the eight o’clock hour came and went with no word from Kari. What if this Dale character hadn’t been working alone? What if his accomplice had bested Kevin so he could grab Kari and was now taking the remainder of the girl’s power?
Sam sent off a frantic text message asking for her sister’s location and ETA. Kari’s response was instantaneous. At the movies. Don’t wait up.
Her sister’s easy return to her social life should have pleased Sam. Instead it infuriated her.
Depressing is what Kari had called their home. She hadn’t wanted to be there any longer. Well, Sam ha
d no choice. The catering business and the house were all they had. And she’d worked herself to the bone for years to make sure they had that much. Kari rarely appreciated her effort.
The doorbell rang while Sam stood fuming in front of her sister’s empty room. This time she had no question who would be on the other side.
She was in the perfect mood to see him.
* * * * *
What had Dion expected when he rang the witch-with-the-tits’ doorbell? That she’d answer with a smile? Perhaps. That desire would flicker in her eyes? Certainly. Or that she’d express her gratitude? Definitely. What he hadn’t expected was the narrow-eyed glare she bestowed on him when she discovered him on her porch.
“What?” she snapped in a low, rough voice that might have been sexy if he’d scented any hint of arousal.
Dion allowed his eyebrows to lift in silent question. It was also a comment on her rudeness. He’d helped her. Surely she hadn’t forgotten that.
“Sorry.” Her apology was hardly heartfelt. She hadn’t bothered to look him in the eye when she muttered it. But at least she stepped back so he could come inside.
“Bad day?”
The mutinous look she gave him made his brows lift yet higher.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she retorted. “What do you want?”
He’d had enough of her surly attitude. In a drawly voice dripping with sarcasm, he replied, “I was under the impression you called me to get the money the weaver owes your sister.”
“Oh.” The breathy syllable implied she’d completely forgotten about the money. Had her bad attitude been because of the other issue of payment? She moved into the middle of the space, retreating farther away from him. “How much was it?”
Dion took the opportunity to mentally sketch out the shape of her living room. He also looked for signs of family and other men. There were none beyond the photographs of, he assumed, her mother and sister. “Thirty thousand,” he absently replied.
The witch’s shoulders slumped in his peripheral vision. Dion focused on her face in time to see the crestfallen expression drawing down her eyelids. “Oh,” she sighed. This breathy sound was at the intersection of melancholy and defeat.
