by Lib Starling
He gaped at her as she fiddled with the heater’s knobs. “Don’t just say ‘of course’ like it’s a normal thing to live in a camper!”
She laughed again, bright and bubbling. Chase had forgotten how much he’d loved that laugh. “It’s way more normal to turn into a wolf and run around on the salt flats, I guess.”
“Okay, you’ve got me there. But these braids, and… dreadlocks? When did you become a hippie?”
“Come on, you know I’ve always had Earth-mother tendencies.”
“I know you liked incense and classic rock. I didn’t realize your interest in peace, love, and homelessness went this far.”
“I’m not homeless,” she said, scowling. “I live in my awesome camper. It’s my home. Come on, you have to admit this place is pretty awesome.” She slid out from behind the steering wheel and stepped back into the depths of the Airstream. “Let me give you the grand tour.”
She showed him her gypsy wagon from bumper to bumper. Chase was finally ready to admit that it was a pretty cool home. Katrina had customized the space with all kinds of clever drawers and secret compartments; she had everything she needed to live in comfort and style – as much as a pretty hippie-girl cared about style.
He moved a few of her books aside and sat on the convertible sofa-bed while Katrina heated water for tea. “I told you my Airstream is the best,” she said, grinning at him over her shoulder as she busied herself with mugs and a bag of loose tea leaves.
“Doesn’t it get lonely, living all by yourself? And what do you do, if you’re not in one place, tied to a job?”
Katrina’s face went still and thoughtful. “I get by. I have talents and I know how to exploit them; let’s just put it that way.”
“That makes it sound shady.”
“It’s nothing shady,” she promised. “Most people just… wouldn’t understand. And as for company, sometimes it’s a little difficult, being on my own. But I like the freedom, too. What about you? Don’t you like being on your own?”
“How did you know…?”
The kettle whistled harsh and loud in the enclosed space, and Katrina pulled it quickly from the glowing coils of the burner. The sound of hot water pouring was gentle and soothing.
“Come on, Chase. You, all the way out here, so far from Blackmeade?”
“Maybe I’m just on vacation.”
“In January?” She handed him his tea.
Chase watched the steam rise in silence. The sweet aroma of orange peel filled the camper.
“You dropped out, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“I always thought you would, sooner or later.”
He glanced up at her face, but she didn’t look judgmental. Nor had her voice sounded disappointed. She sounded… proud of him. But still he couldn’t help making a sarcastic reply. It was tension over his dad, what his father would say when he found out. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“It’s a good thing, Chase. You’re not Blackmeade material, and that’s what makes you so great. Can you really see yourself getting into corporate life? Controlling the destinies of men and businesses?” She blew on her tea. “Nah. That’s never been you.”
He took this in silence, sipping cautiously at his hot tea.
“I guess I decided the tied-down life isn’t for me, either,” Katrina went on. “Roving around, just me and my camper and… and my interests. This suits me much better, even if it does get a little lonely sometimes. We all have to go where we feel best, where our spirits are free. Life is too short to live chained to something you don’t love.”
“You’re right.” Chase smiled. “I’ve been nervous about this change. I mean, I feel great inside…” Mostly, he silently amended. I’d feel better if Roxy still loved me like I love her. “I’ve been so worried over how my dad will react. He’s going to flip out, I know it, but I have to just tell him that Blackmeade isn’t for me… corporate life isn’t for me. I can’t let him stop me from having the kind of life I want.”
“That’s the spirit!”
He laughed softly into the steam rising from his cup. “God, you are such a hippie now.”
“Big change from the girl who used to haunt all the frat parties looking to score with the Blackmeade boys.”
“Nothing else has changed about you, though. You’re still smart and funny. And beautiful.”
Katrina curled her legs beneath her on the bench seat. Her lashes lowered, obscuring her blue eyes. “I still feel badly about what happened between us, Chase.”
“You do?”
“I was young and dumb. And swept away by hormones. I was pretty awful to you.”
“You weren’t the only one who was awful to me.” His face heated as he thought about Alexander, their final fight and his departure from Alpha House. Chase cleared his throat and took a long swig of his tea. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve got other girl troubles to plague me.”
He unrolled the story of Roxy before her like a dirty carpet, feeling the bite of shame over his fights with Alexander and his involvement with Scarlett. When he told how he’d discovered Scarlett’s witchery, Katrina set her mug on the camper’s tabletop with a hollow thud. She leveled an intense stare at Chase, and he stopped talking, pinned in place by Katrina’s eyes.
“What?” Chase asked uneasily.
She drew a deep breath. Chase could hear a tremor in it, as if her body shook a little.
“Chase, haven’t you ever wondered why I never freaked out?”
“Freaked out?”
She tilted her head. “When you told me you’re a shapeshifter.”
“I… remember being a little surprised that you took it so well. But I didn’t really think… I mean, I guess I assumed that because we were…” Why were these words so hard for him to say? Chase swallowed a lump in his throat and sipped again at his tea. “Because we were in love, or because I thought you loved me, at least…”
She sighed. “I kept something from you back then, but seeing you tonight…” She tossed her head as if trying to drive away some nagging thought. The beads in her braids clattered. “I think it’s more than chance that we’re together again, Chase. I think there’s a purpose here.”
“A purpose?” Chase wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He burned for Roxy and ached from her loss, but there was something so comforting about Katrina’s presence.
“I don’t want to keep secrets from you anymore. It’s not the way I want to re-start this thing.”
Re-start. Chase stared mutely down at his shoes. Did he want to re-start anything with Katrina? Roxy hated him now – he had felt her rage and disgust the night he’d fought with Alexander. He was certain there was no going back to Roxy’s arms. Could he be happy again in Katrina’s? Chase wasn’t convinced that he could love any woman who wasn’t Roxy. But then, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t, either.
He looked up at Katrina, ready to tell her he’d try it, that he was willing to break his loneliness, and hers, too, for the sake of a second chance. But Katrina was already speaking by the time his eyes met hers.
“I’m a witch,” she said.
A cold fist constricted around Chase’s heart. All he could see for a moment was Scarlett, her lithe, beautiful body spread for him across her candle-lit bed. And all he could feel was the fear and anger and shame of knowing she had been able to control him, knowing he’d been her puppet.
He lurched to his feet. “Witches are dangerous,” he blurted.
Katrina caught at his hand, but he pulled away with one harsh, abrupt gesture.
“Please, Chase…”
“No way. I can’t trust your kind. No shifter can.”
“We’re not all bad – not all like her, the one who attacked you.”
“That’s bullshit. Witches and shifters have always been enemies, since time began. You know this.”
Or did she? Chase had no idea how witches were educated, if they were educated at all – what they knew of the terrible history be
tween their kind and the world of shifters. The power struggles, the persecution on both sides, the entrapment and danger and death…
Katrina frowned up at him, still sitting with her legs folded beneath her. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jesus, that school did worse damage to you than trying to force you into a business suit. Witches and shifters don’t have to be enemies, Chase. There’s not some… some cosmic law that says we have to hate one another, or be suspicious, or avoid working together.”
“Working together?”
“Yes. Sit down; you look like you’re about to jump through one of my windows, and I can’t afford to replace the glass right now. Do you know how many charms I’d have to sell to raise that kind of cash?”
“Charms?”
“What do you think I do for a living? I’m Katrina Swanson, Traveling Witch. I sell charms and spells to people who need them. It’s not great money, but it’s enough for me to get by. As long as I don’t have to buy any new windows.”
Trembling, Chase sank back onto his seat.
“Listen, I’m sorry I kept it from you, but look at you: this is how you Blackmeade boys react to this sort of news. Can you really blame me?”
“Everything we’ve ever been taught about witches…”
“Is wrong. Or at least, it’s not the whole truth. It can’t be. Look at me, Chase. It’s me, Katrina. You know me.”
He stared at her wide-eyed, taking in her familiar, beautiful face, her concerned expression, the slight frown of worry that creased her otherwise smooth brow.
“You can trust me, Chase. You know you can.”
He shook his head.
“Put Blackmeade behind you. It wasn’t the right place for you – you know I’m right about that. Put it all behind you: the fraternity, their expectations for your life… and what they told you about history, about witches. If they were wrong about you, Chase – if they were wrong that your destiny is to be a businessman and take over your dad’s work when you graduate, just like every other good Blackmeade boy who’s gone before – can’t they be wrong about me, too?”
Her argument made sense, though Chase didn’t want it to make sense. His world kept losing predictability, safety – or the illusion of safety. He wanted reality to be simple, black and white. But he knew it was a futile wish, a childish demand.
“If I can trust you,” he said, choosing his words with care, “why should I? And what do you mean, we can work together? On what?”
Katrina reached out in the dim light of the camper. She took his face in her gentle hands, so that Chase couldn’t look away. He wondered whether she was casting some spell as she spoke – who knew what witches were capable of? – but he felt unchanged, detected no altered motivation or clouded thoughts as he had experienced under Scarlett’s dark sway.
“We can work together,” Katrina said, “on tracking down that witch. What did you call her? Scarlett. Not all of us are like her, Chase. Some of us take it very seriously when one of our kind uses the Power to harm others. We can stop her. I know how to do it.” One of her hands fell to his neck. Lightly, she traced his bare skin, running her fingertip along the place where the chain of his stay should be. “We can get back your stay. We can put this to rights.”
“Just because you don’t like what some witches do? Why would you offer to help me – to help Alpha House and Roxy? It doesn’t make sense.”
Katrina tapped her lips with one pale finger, giving him a thoughtful, sly smile. “There’s something in it for me, too, Chase. Believe me. I may be a good witch, but that doesn’t mean I’m entirely selfless.”
.7.
R oxy shifted the last box onto her hip, nudged the back door of Darien’s car closed, and started up the walkway to the little blue house. Through the open door, she could see Brooke carrying her bed linens in a giant, tangled wad, transporting them from her old bedroom to the one that had been Scarlett’s.
It had been good of Brooke to agree to the room swap. After Scarlett had departed, leaving a short note to Brooke explaining that she was moving out of town, Darien was quick to suggest that he might become the third housemate. “It’ll be like Three’s Company,” he’d said, “only I really am gay!”
However, he was reluctant to move into Scarlett’s room. Roxy couldn’t blame him. She was new to shifting and didn’t have the knowledge of witches – the hatred for witches, she was often tempted to think – that the boys of Alpha House had. But just the thought that she had lived for months under the same roof as a witch still set Roxy’s skin to crawling. She couldn’t expect Darien to thrill to the idea of occupying a witch’s room, and so she casually suggested the room swap to Brooke – “Just to shake things up.”
Darien seemed grateful. He bit his lip and peered into Scarlett’s old room as if a murderer might leap out of the closet at any moment, brandishing a butcher’s knife. Roxy handed him the final box, and he nodded his thanks but still couldn’t peel his suspicious gaze from the bedroom. Brooke was busy making the space her own, singing along to the music streaming from her laptop as she dusted her bed frame and plumped her pillows. There was no trace of Scarlett left in the house that Roxy could see, but Darien still appeared to sense something of the witch’s presence.
She turned Darien around and gently pushed him down the hall toward his new bedroom, then settled on his bare mattress to help him unpack.
“Well,” she said, “I guess I should welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks.” Darien yanked the zipper of his duffel bag open and began stacking his neatly folded clothes in the dresser. “It still feels a little spooky in here, you know. Can’t you sense it?”
Roxy shrugged. “I don’t sense anything. Maybe I was just so used to living with Scarlett…”
“It’ll fade with time, I suppose.” Darien sighed. “It’s a nice little house, anyway. And I’m sure you ladies are much better roommates than the Alpha boys.”
“We’re definitely quieter. And cleaner. We probably fart a lot less, too, and I can guarantee we’re better cooks.”
Darien rolled his eyes. “Sounds like heaven already, even if it does still feel witchy in here.”
“She’s gone, Darien – just remember that. We won’t have to deal with her crap ever again.”
“I really hope you’re right.” He unpacked in silence while Roxy found his sheets and began making up his bed. Then Darien straightened and caught her eye. She paused with a set of pillow cases hanging limp in her hands. Darien’s face was pale and stern. “Does Brooke know?”
Roxy gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes widened in stunned disbelief. “About… about shifting? Or about Scarlett?” She chewed her lip for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t matter; they’re both equally unbelievable.”
“So that’s a no.”
“No, she doesn’t know… or at least, I sure haven’t told her anything.”
“Good instincts. Though I guess it doesn’t take a genius to realize that you’ve got to keep these kinds of secrets away from the normals of the world.”
Roxy smiled and resumed dressing the bed. “Can you imagine? Poor Brooke; she’d have a heart attack.”
“Brooke? No way. She’s too tough. She’d go on a persecution rampage and drive every last one of us out of Jackson Hole. It’d be like that scene in Frankenstein, where all the villagers grab pitchforks and torches and storm the castle.” Darien grabbed a ruler from a half-unpacked box and waved it over his head. “Drive out the monsters! To Hell with them! To Hell, I say!”
Roxy laughed at his dramatic pantomime, but still she shook her head. “She’s not like that. It would blow her mind, to know what the world is really like – it’s still blowing mine, to tell you the truth. But she’d accept it. She’s too smart. She doesn’t panic over stuff like this. She’s practical; she just deals.”
Darien resumed his expression of serious musing. “Then maybe… maybe we ought to tell her.”
Roxy didn’t know what to say. She loved Brooke, and
felt guilty keeping any secret from her – even one as important as this. Especially one so important. But instinct told her that the world of shifters was better left hidden – that ordinary people were better off not knowing. She had the uncomfortable, sinking feeling that she would commit a betrayal either way – betraying Brooke by hiding reality from her closest friend, or betraying her own people by making the truth known.
“I just think,” Darien said quietly, musing as he tended to his folded clothes, “that we aren’t quite done with Scarlett yet. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know why myself. Maybe it just feels too easy, that she gave up and left town just like that. Scarlett never surrendered anything she wanted so simply.”
“You’re right about that.” Roxy remembered with a bitter pang how Scarlett had flaunted her relationship with Chase and then gone after Alexander, too.
“If we aren’t done with the witch… if she comes back… Brooke might end up involved.”
Roxy nodded mutely. It was true. The persistent, itchy sensation that Scarlett was out there somewhere, and still had her eye on Roxy, had never vanished, even though Scarlett had. If Scarlett returned to raise more havoc among the shifters, Brooke might see things that no ordinary human ought to see… and Roxy would rather her friend was prepared for the shock than had it thrust upon her.
“Let’s tell her, Darien. I trust her. Even if she doesn’t believe us, I trust her to keep it to herself.”
“I trust her, too.” His hands knotted together for one anxious moment, then he folded his arms across his chest and drew a resolute breath. “Let’s do it now, before we both freak ourselves out and can’t do it at all.”
Roxy called Brooke in. She entered the room smiling and sat on the bed when Roxy asked her to, but when she noticed the anxious looks on her friends’ faces, Brooke’s smile faded.
“What’s going on? Who died?”
“Nobody,” Darien said. “We just have something really important to tell you.”
Darien did most of the talking. As he explained the ancient lineage of shifters and the rarity of the gift, Roxy watched Brooke’s face intently. A range of emotions passed over her friend’s pretty features, from humor (when she thought it was a joke) to confusion, from disbelief to fear, and finally, with a twang of bitter hurt in Roxy’s gut, a look of pity that said loud and clear just how insane Brooke now believed both Roxy and Darien to be.
