More whispering filled Cassie’s head. She shook it to try to make it dim down. She hated how it had been happening more often. She almost felt like she was losing her mind. It had to do with the bond, but it was just yet another thing she knew very little about.
Whitney kept driving, still trying to find a radio station. Nate’s presence in Cassie’s mind grew fainter along with the other voices.
“We’ll be out of his range soon,” Whitney told Cassie. “Any last words you’d like me to tell Lover Boy?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Lover Boy? Really?”
“Well, I figured Eye Candy could be offensive since he’s your mate. Mates normally get mad, even if someone is just speaking about their bond-partner that way.”
“Nope, no anger here. In fact, I’m more than happy to get away, and you can call him anything you want to,” Cassie replied.
The thread connecting Cassie to Nate mentally grew even quieter, and so did all the voices.
“I won’t miss that part.”
“What part?” Whitney asked.
“All those voices in my head. It was getting a little full,” Cassie complained. Taking a deep breath, she enjoyed the mental silence.
“Voices?”
“Yeah, whenever Nate and I talked in my head, there were always more voices,” Cassie explained.
Whitney swerved, barely missing the car she was passing on the narrow, two-lane road. “You didn’t,” she said, accusing Cassie.
Cassie’s eyes widened. She had no clue what Whitney was talking about… again. The night human world was too complicated to keep up with as it was, and then to add Whitney and her enthusiasm on top of it, Cassie was genuinely confused.
“Didn’t …”
“You bonded to him,” Whitney accused with a big grin on her face. “You actually bonded to him.”
Cassie quickly put her hands over her friend’s mouth.
“Don’t say that out loud. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”
Whitney wiggled her eyebrows, but Cassie didn’t move her hands. Whitney waited, and Cassie finally relented as it was close to impossible to hold her friend’s mouth shut with her seatbelt on.
“I’m not anyone. I’m your best friend, and man we have much more to talk about now.” Whitney grinned as she passed yet another car. “My best friend went and grew up without telling me. She bonded herself to a night human. That’s something you don’t forget to tell your friend, and I’m sorry, the no tell policy doesn’t hold for best friends. This is one life milestone you don’t get to keep to yourself. Once we get to our hotel, you have to tell me every detail. Every detail.”
Cassie shook her head. There weren’t many details, especially not the ones Whitney wanted. At least Cassie got the basics of a night human bond; it had to deal with love and wanting to be connected forever. Most of the time the bond formed between people who were mates and essentially married. Whitney did tell her that people who were friends could also bond, but Cassie knew what Whitney was thinking, and it was far from the truth.
Even though she was bonded, she needed to get out of it. It had been done to save her friend, and that was all. Her feelings for Nate—which were still growing—had nothing to do with it. And the night human Jared, who tried to explain more about the bond to her, had to be wrong. He claimed you couldn’t get bonded unless you wanted to be. Cassie didn’t choose to be Nate’s mate, and she sure didn’t want to be bonded to him. Yet it had still worked. You could bond someone you didn’t want to be with. She was living proof of that. At least, she needed to keep telling herself that.
CHAPTER 2
Cassie waited behind her friend in line. She had no clue what they were doing or what was going on, but she kept her mouth shut. Whitney had said to let her do all the talking, and Cassie was following her instructions. They had parked the car almost an hour ago and had been waiting in the line since. Whitney didn’t talk as they stood there, and neither did Cassie. She didn’t know what was going on, but Whitney seemed a bit on edge. As Whitney finally approached the counter, Cassie followed close behind. Moving over, Whitney let Cassie stand beside her.
“Name, kind,” the teenage boy at the counter squeaked out.
Cassie guessed he was even younger than they were from his size and voice.
“Whitney Mallory of the skinwalker clan,” Whitney replied. The boy turned to Cassie. She looked blankly at the guy. Whitney answered for her, “Cassandra Booth, day human of skinwalker descent.”
The boy nodded, and then held out a computerized contraption with a hole in it. Whitney placed her hand in the hole with a picture of a palm faced up on it. The handheld computer thing beeped, and a light turned on and ran a light over the hand. The boy took a second one from behind the counter and held it out to Cassie. She placed her hand inside just as her friend had. The light turned on, and she felt the sides of the box press tighter to her hand. Suddenly there was a sharp pinch to her pinky finger.
“Ouch,” Cassie complained as she tried to pull her hand from the box.
The guy looked at Cassie like she was the strange one, but didn’t let go of the box. The light stopped moving, and the box let go of Cassie’s hand. She pulled it out immediately.
The boy glanced down. “Entry denied,” he read out on the machine.
“Denied?” Cassie asked in disbelief.
“You’re not just a day human,” the boy replied, pointing to the scanner which had just tried to eat Cassie’s hand. “Anyone who is part of a ruling family must seek permission to visit before coming so that the proper welcome can be made.”
“I’m not part of any ruling family,” Cassie replied. What is he talking about?
“Ugh,” Whitney groaned. “You’re Than’s mate and thus part of the ruling family. I didn’t think about that. I figured your family or mine had called ahead of us and wanted us home. They didn’t, but this …” Whitney shook her head like she should have guessed as much.
Cassie groaned, too. Their road trip was being cut short. She just wanted to get away, and now that was being foiled by Nate, and he wasn’t even there.
“Well, technically, she isn’t part of the family yet. She has yet to complete all the bonding rituals and right now is still under her own family,” Whitney added, batting her eyes and using her movie star looks to try to win over the guy.
“Completely true,” Cassie added, trying her best to imitate her friend and her “pretty please” face.
The guy glanced first at Cassie, and then at Whitney. He gave in. “I need to verify this with my boss,” he said before he turned and walked away.
“This is ridiculous. That thing bit me,” Cassie complained in a hushed voice.
Whitney grinned. “Um, that’s what it was supposed to do. It had to test your blood to make sure you’re telling the truth about who you are.”
“You could have warned me,” Cassie complained.
Whitney gave her an evil grin. “What would be the fun in that?”
Cassie hit her friend’s arm. She hadn’t noticed, but all around them people at the counter were doing exactly what they had done. Several of them appeared as shocked as Cassie when they were pricked.
“Day humans,” Whitney explained. “Night humans don’t feel pain the same way as day humans. A prick in the finger is nothing compared to being turned into our night forms.”
Cassie nodded, and two new people moved to the front of the line next to them. Each one took a turn putting their hand in the machine. Neither one flinched. Night humans- but what kind exactly? Cassie had been told the basics, such as that there were over twenty different kinds of night humans that held territories in the US alone, but she didn’t know much more beyond that. Cassie looked around the room, scanning for where their guy had gone. He was busy talking to an older lady. The boy was being talked to quite strictly before she noticed the large… well, extremely large picture behind the two of them. There was an enormous red-bearded man standing with his petite, blond-haired
wife along with two grown sons. The one on the right was almost as big as the father and looked like he would have a beard in no time, but it was the one on his left that caught Cassie’s attention. The reddish-brown-haired boy was only a few years older than them, and Cassie had met him once before.
“Why is Turner’s picture on the wall and that big?” Cassie asked Whitney as the young man who took their palm scans and blood returned with his boss.
“He’s the second son of the leader here,” Whitney replied. “Wait a second. How do you know who he is? You’ve never met any other night humans.”
“I met him this summer. He’s one of Devin’s friends.” Peering closer at the picture, she decided it had to be at least a couple years old. “And he has his left ear pierced now. I can’t decide which way looks better.”
The older blonde looked at Cassie, assessing her. “Are you saying you know Turner Winter?” she asked in disbelief.
“I guess,” Cassie replied, still unsure what it meant.
Reaching down, the lady picked up the phone at the station with a smug look on her face. She dialed a number while they watched, still not being told a thing. Whitney held her breath, as hopeful as Cassie that some good luck would fall on them. They both needed a break from their current lives.
“Yes, please connect me through to Master Turner’s butler,” she said to the person on the other end of the line and looked at Cassie like she was in trouble.
“Butler?” Cassie whispered. Who had a butler?
Whitney grinned and quickly covered Cassie’s mouth. Ooops. She was supposed to let Whitney do all the talking.
“Has Master Turner been with Lord Devin this summer?” she asked, checking on Cassie’s story.
At first, Cassie wanted to ask why that even mattered, but she bit her tongue instead. Master. Lord. What sort of world are we in? Cassie just knew them as Turner and Devin. The lady made them sound like these very important people, not a family friend who asked them to stop by to break a spell and then fight hand-to-hand with two witches. Cassie didn’t know anything about lords and masters, but the title alone made it seem like they didn’t do things that taxing.
“And did he spend time with a Cassandra Booth, mate to the heir to the Skinwalker clan?” she asked the person.
“Cassie and Maria,” Whitney added. No one called Cassie Cassandra.
“Cassie and Maria,” the lady corrected, tapping her foot impatiently. The voice on the other end abruptly stopped, and Cassie quickly recognized the voice that was now chewing out the lady. Her smug expression disappeared immediately. “I’m very sorry. I’ll let her and her friend pass immediately.”
Whitney smiled nicely at the young man as he pulled out two cards to hand them over to them.
“Master Turner said to tell you he will pick you up from the hotel for dinner tonight, but to have a fun time exploring until then,” the lady explained, bowing her head to Cassie. “I’m sorry to have been an inconvenience for you, Lady Bay.”
Cassie opened her mouth to correct her for using Nate’s last name instead of her own, but Whitney clamped her hand down. Then, she took the two cards which had been printed for them by the younger guy. Whitney grinned, and before anyone else could stop them, hurried to the door off to the left side of the room, away from the larger-than-life-sized picture of Turner.
“You didn’t tell me you met Turner this summer,” Whitney exclaimed as they headed out the door to the waiting cabs. Whitney flashed the cab driver the new IDs they had just received, and he even bowed to Cassie. Cassie was ready to do an Aunt Maria rant on her friend, but Whitney shook her head.
“Would you ladies like to go to the hotel or downtown first?” the older man asked, keeping his eyes from meeting Cassie’s.
“Hotel first,” Whitney decided for them.
Cassie opened her mouth to speak, and Whitney quickly put her hand over it again to keep her from saying something. Keeping quiet—especially with Whitney—was a hard if not impossible task. She had too many questions and a few objections, but Whitney was doing what was best for them. Her questions would have to wait.
The cabbie drove through a tunnel leading into town, and Cassie watched out the window. The parking garage and entry into town were farther back than she realized. She thought town was just on the other side of the tunnel. The cabbie whizzed through the dark before coming to the other side. Cassie could see a whole big city sprawled out before them. The car continued to whip down the road into town, and he only slowed once they reached the first houses. Cassie was glad he did. It gave her a chance to look around at the night human world, which was just waking for their day. She tried to keep her mouth from dropping as people passed by that looked just about as scary as the creatures that hunted her the week before. Seeing her reaction, Whitney laughed.
“This is why we needed to come here. You have to see the real night human world and not that house they have you locked away in.” Whitney grinned.
“No wonder Nate told me to remain with you to stay safe,” Cassie replied as they passed a creature that was twice as big as any man she had ever seen, and paler than someone who hadn’t been out in the sun for years.
Whitney laughed again. “They aren’t dangerous. Everyone here has to go through the same way we came and be let in. They’re all here peacefully. Than’s just overprotective.”
Cassie wanted to think that, but as they passed a man who was more snake than human, she didn’t think he was way too out of line. So many of the people walking around were odd enough to haunt her dreams for life, and knowing that they fed on day human blood made her realize she wasn’t going anywhere in the city without her best friend.
“Here’s the Santiago Hotel,” the cabbie stated as he pulled the car to a stop in front of a three-story, white-walled, glamorously decorated building.
He hurried out of the car faster than humanly possible to get Cassie’s door before she could open it. Night human, she thought. At least, he wasn’t scary-looking. The cabbie waited with the open door, still bowing his head to her.
“Um, thanks,” Cassie said as she slid out with Whitney right behind her.
“My pleasure, Lady Bay,” the man replied.
Cassie was going to object again, but Whitney grabbed her arm and pulled her through the open doors of the enormous hotel. Cassie glanced at her friend, but she ignored her pleading look. They were far from alone, and she had a feeling Whitney didn’t want everyone to know how new Cassie was to the world. She acted like it was safe, but Cassie had a clue that strolling around without knowledge of the place wasn’t exactly safe.
Walking to the desk, Whitney held their cards out to the person who was behind it and talking on the phone. As soon as she saw Cassie’s card, she hung up without saying good-bye.
“Welcome to the Santiago Hotel,” she greeted with a slight accent. “How many nights can we have the pleasure of your company?”
“We will be here until Sunday,” Whitney answered.
“But the coven is on Friday night,” Cassie told her friend. Whitney wasn’t part of the coven, but her mother was, so Cassie assumed her mother told her about it.
Whitney grinned wickedly. “That’s why we’ll be here until Sunday.” Yep. Whitney already knew.
The girl behind the counter began to type in the details before pausing to scan the cards, then continued to type.
“Will the president’s suite do for your visit?” she asked.
“That would be great,” Whitney replied with her thousand-watt smile. She was a complete natural at it.
“How the heck—” Cassie got out before Whitney stepped on her foot to distract her. “Ow.” She looked up at her friend.
With her back to the receptionist, Whitney mouthed the words, ‘Please stay quiet.’
“We’ve given you the suite on the top floor. It comes fully stocked, but should you need anything else just let us know,” the girl added, handing Whitney their cards back. Smiling, Whitney nodded. “I can get someo
ne to take your bags to your room,” she offered.
“We traveled light since it’s only the weekend. I’ll take care of it.” Whitney hefted the mostly-empty bag for the receptionist to see.
“Great. Elevators to three and the only door on the left,” she explained before bowing to Cassie.
Cassie stared at the top of the head of the girl. Everything made less sense since they arrived. What was with all the bowing to her? Whitney looped her arm in Cassie’s and dragged her to the elevator.
As soon as the door closed, Cassie turned to her friend.
“You have a lot of explaining to do. What the heck is going on?” Cassie put her hands on her hips as she stared at her friend.
“I’m not completely sure, but it seems your mating bond registers on their little blood meters. Since you’re bonded to Than, our next alpha, that basically makes you a princess in the night human world. This is great. We’re going to have so much fun here, even more than I had planned. It’s like a free ticket to do anything,” Whitney gushed.
“And how do we pay for this? I’m pretty sure your parents will see that on your credit card when we leave.”
They had gotten in more than a little trouble the year before when Whitney decided her emergency credit card from her parents should be used for a night on the town when she was depressed after failing her witchling class at school. There wasn’t much to do in their town, but they had managed between the mall, Guiro’s Italian restaurant, and the private chauffeur Whitney rented to charge more than Cassie was sure her uncle made in a month.
“That’s the best part. You’re royalty now. You don’t have to pay for a thing. This is all given to you,” Whitney replied. “I honestly didn’t think this would happen this soon. I figured people would have to be able to see your bond, but those magic machines made it happen. This is great. This will be great. You will forget all about your crappy week.”
The elevator bell dinged as they stopped on their floor. Whitney made a grand bow to Cassie, who clunked her on the head in response.
The Wendigo Witchling Page 2
