by Mia Harlan
“Well, you’re you now, and you don’t look so good.” She clucks. “But you don’t feel warm. I should get the thermometer, just to be sure.”
“Oh, Letty.” I sit up and throw my arms around her in a tight hug. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Now you’re really worrying me.” She plops down on the couch next to me. “I love you too, pet. Now, come. Spill. Tell me what’s the matter.”
“Everything’s the matter!” I whisper-wail. Yeah, fine, I’m acting like a child... but after the year I’ve had, I think I’ve earned it.
Plus, when have I ever acted my age? My mother was barely around when I was growing up, and just when I was starting to feel like a normal college kid, I had to go on the run. I never got to finish my degree. And now I’ll never get to do whatever it is young people my age do. I’ll never go dancing at Club Vee. I’ll never get the little bird tattoo I’ve been eying in the window of Lady Blue Tattoo on my way to and from work. I’ll never get to hook up with my hot coworker. And I’ll definitely never be able to be with my mates.
Nope. I get to spend my days pretending to be eighty. Running a library. Supervising staff. Taking care of a library cat-dog.
“Oh, no! Stacks!” I cry, grabbing my purse and searching madly for my phone.
“What happened in the stacks? You’re scaring me, Violet!”
“Not the stacks. Stacks! Our new library cat. I picked him up from Calluna this morning, but I completely forgot to tell Nole!”
“I thought you were going to name that cat Dewey?”
I shake my head. “I tried Dewey, and Book Cart, and Fiction, but he ignored me.”
“He’s a cat, dear. They tend to do that.”
“Not Stacks. And I don’t think Nole even knows he’s there.”
“Then give the boy a call. Ask him to dinner. Tell him you’re really a hot, young thing and you’d like to jump his bones.”
“Oh my Chameleon, Violet, what have you been watching?”
“Not watching. Reading, dear. You left an old romance novel in the kitchen.” Violet winks. “Now, call that boy and flirt with him.”
“You know I’m not going to flirt with him.” I roll my eyes as I scroll through my contacts until I find the number for the library’s front desk. Then, just to mess with her, I add, “Plus, I still haven’t told you about my mates.”
“Your what? Violet, put down that phone! Don’t you dare make that call until you explain!”
Except, I do dare. I hold up a finger to my lips to shush the now outraged Violet and listen to the phone ring. She shoots me a glare, but doesn’t dare say anything that might give us away. Instead, she scowls at me and reaches for my purse. I watch her warily until she pulls out the copy of Love Blooms my sister donated to the library and opens it.
“Silver Springs Public Library, Nole speaking. How can I help you?” the bear shifter answers the phone, sounding all cute and professional.
My heart skips a beat, but I push the feeling aside. Then I quickly shift into my eighty-year-old friend so that Nole will recognize my voice and explain about Stacks.
“You don’t have to worry about anything, Violet. I’ll give Stacks his dinner and take him for a walk before I lock up.”
“A walk?” I ask in surprise while Violet leafs through the paperback and pretends not to listen in on our conversation. “You never took Handkerchief for walks.”
“Handkerchief never meowed at the front doors to be let out. And he definitely never peed on a fire hydrant.”
“Stacks did that?”
“He did. I really wish you’d been there.” Nole snorts. “But don’t worry, I took a picture. I meant to text it to you.”
“You did?” I grin, only to realize I sound way too upbeat for someone who’s supposedly sick. I throw in a few coughs so Nole won’t think I’m playing hooky and then freeze. Crap. Wasn’t I supposed to have a headache, not a cold?
“Are you feeling okay?” Nole asks.
“Probably just coming down with something, dear,” I lie. Five points.
“Do you want me to come over? I can close the library right now and come over!” Nole cries, sounding panicked.
“You can’t just close the library, Nole, and I’m fine!” I shoot Violet a wide-eyed look in an obvious cry for help, but she’s too busy reading Chapter 1 of Love Blooms to notice. That or she’s purposely ignoring me, which is the least I deserve.
It takes me another five minutes to convince Nole that no, I don’t need him to call for a doctor, or come over, or send one of his brothers to check up on me. Which is a relief, since I do not want to end up with purple hair or all my clothes floating in the fountain down the street. Not that I won’t give as good as I get, when it comes to pranks.
When I finally hang up, Violet looks like she’s ready to strangle me. She slams the book shut, narrows her eyes, and purses her lips. “I cannot believe you, Violet Adelyn Kopieren! If you don’t explain what you said about mates this instant, I swear I’ll never forgive you.”
So I do. I explain everything.
I start with how hot Nole looked this morning in his brother’s shrunken suit and how much hotter he looked in his gym clothes. I explain how I almost lost control when he got back from Willow’s shop, though the feeling was most definitely one-sided.
Then I backtrack and tell her about Liam. I describe Betty’s grandson, with his bulging muscles and huge troll build, and finish off with how he’d called me his mate.
“And you didn’t feel the mating bond?” Violet asks.
I shrug. “I know I was in your body, but I’m still a chameleon. We just don’t feel mating bonds the way shifters do. We don’t even have mates, unless we’re mated to a supe who does.”
“So the troll might not be your mate after all?” Violet asks.
“Maybe...” But then I think back to the way my heart raced. To how hot I found Liam. To the way I reacted the moment he walked through that door. “There was definitely something there. With him and Cash.”
“Cash?” Violet frowns. “He tried to pay you?”
“No.” I snort and tell her about Colin Stanton-Howe the skunk-suit sporting blood-mage.
“And really you called him a wampitch?” Violet snorts.
“And Betty called him a blitch.” I grin. “But then he said I was beautiful and asked me out to lunch. He didn’t even care about my age.”
“Your age?” Violet rolls her eyes. “If anything, he’ll start to care when he finds out you’re practically a kid.”
“I’m not practically a kid!” I whine, totally sounding like one.
Violet and I look at each other for a moment, and then we both burst out laughing.
“I just don’t know what to do,” I finally tell her. “I almost shifted around Cash and around Nole.”
“But not around Liam? Even though he’s your mate and Nole isn’t?”
“I might have shifted if Liam had come closer. Or if he’d acted less horrified when he saw me.”
“That boy didn’t expect to be mated to a gran, huh?” Violet snorts.
Instead of laughing, I feel my heart constrict. Because her words are a reminder that Liam and I, or Cash and I, or even Nole and I—if he was even interested—can never be.
“Maybe you should just tell your mates the truth,” Violet finally says.
“Both of them?”
Violet shrugs.
“You know I can’t do that!”
“Why not? You told me.”
“But that’s different! I trust you. I don’t know if I can trust them.”
“You won’t know unless you give them a chance.”
I shake my head. “What if they turn on me, like my mother and Gwinnie did?”
“Your mother is a piece of work, Violet. And as for your sister, she was just a kid when she left. Maybe you should try putting your trust in her now.”
“No way.” Not after all those times I called Gwinnie, whispering ‘pick up, pick u
p, pick up,’ only to have it go to voicemail. All those holidays while I waited downstairs, hoping she’d come home, only to be disappointed—again. And then came that final day, the one when my mother finally told me the real reason I never saw my sister. She wanted nothing to do with me.
“It’s about time you started trusting other people, Violet.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I’m glad I could be there for you for the past year.” Violet pats my hand. “But, dear, I’m not going to be around forever.”
“Don’t say that!” I protest, a lump forming in my throat.
“It’s the truth. I’ve lived a long and happy life. It’s about time that you lived yours.”
Chapter 10
Liam
“There you are.” Bert joins me as I finish my eighth bicep curl with the three hundred pound weight.
“Don’t you have somewhere better to be?” I snap. You know, instead of owning up and apologizing.
“Hey, I’m just here to work out.” Bert raises his hands in surrender and heads toward the wall of dumbbells. He grabs a medium-sized one—a two hundred pound, I’d say, though the vampire could easily handle more—before taking the bench next to mine.
“Whatever.” I growl, showing teeth. Bert ignores me and focuses on his dumbbell.
I growl again, then give up and go back to lifting weights. Except with every grunt—with every fucking inhale—I see her face. Her wrinkles. Her thinning gray hair. Her cat-eye glasses. The horror in her eyes when she saw me. Her troll mate.
“Only good thing that happened today is that I found this place.” I grunt.
At least I can finally let loose in a gym built for supes. And Fit in a Spell is definitely built for supes! Dumbbells that go past two hundred, bench presses that might actually pose a challenge, spells to keep the equipment from breaking. The place is troll heaven.
Not that my usual gym in Scarborough is all bad. At least membership’s cheap, and it keeps me from breaking any more of Gran’s floorboards. Still, their equipment’s so flimsy, what I do barely even counts as a workout. What kind of gym doesn’t go past a hundred and sixty pound dumbbells? Or kettlebells that a lesser supe could lift with one finger? I’m surprised I didn’t lose all my muscle mass since I moved back to Silver Springs. And if I’d gone there today, I’d probably max out my Unintentional Use of Strength Insurance policy.
“Erm, Liam...” Bert lowers his voice and looks around, making sure the wolf shifter at the front desk isn’t listening.
I switch my weight to my left hand and wait for him to chew me out for losing my temper at the library. Or to bring up my older-than-Gran mate.
“There’s something you should know,” he says instead.
“What?” I growl. His tone suggests it’s bad news, but how much worse could things get? Apparently, a lot worse.
“Not so loud,” he hisses. His eyes dart around wildly, like someone could be watching. Then, when he’s absolutely sure the coast is clear, he lowers his voice even further and whispers, “Rumor has it this place is owned by the mafia.”
“The what?” I bark, while Bert’s eyes widen in panic. I almost think my partner’s playing a practical joke, except Bert is way too old—and uptight—for that.
“Are you sure?” I ask anyway.
Bert nods.
I look at the gym with new eyes, or more specifically at the dark-haired, olive-skinned wolf manning the front desk. The one who has a scowl on his face and a scar running across his right cheek.
“Oh hell.” I slam my dumbbell back onto the rack—which doesn’t collapse, small miracles—and stand up. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“Where are you going?” Bert shouts after me as I storm across the gym. “Liam?”
“To get my stuff.” I push into the locker room with a growl. “And I really liked this place, too.”
“Wait.” Bert zooms around at vampire speed, checking all the stalls. Not that there’s anyone around, since the place just opened. Most people don’t even know it’s here. I didn’t.
Only reason I noticed the gym is because I was storming across a part of town I don’t normally see, scaring all the citizens I passed. That’s when I saw it. The perfect outlet for my frustration. A brand new gym.
One look at the walls made of one-way-glass and the state-of-the-art equipment, and I was sold. I jogged home, grabbed my gym bag, and signed up on the spot. Thought it was a sign, except apparently it’s a front for the mafia... like my day couldn’t get any worse?
“Now we can talk,” Bert says, turning on one of the showers to drown out his voice.
I raise an eyebrow and cross my arms in front of my chest.
“It’s a good gym,” he says.
“Your point?”
“We could stay undercover. Make sure everything’s on the up and up.”
I hesitate, but it’s a good plan. “We can keep the town safe... and get a good workout...”
“Without driving to Scarborough,” Bert finishes.
“You really got something against Scarborough, haven’t you?”
“Was seeing a woman from there in the early 90s, and she tried to stake me,” Bert says.
“Seriously?”
He shrugs. “Wanna talk about your mate?”
“No.” I press my thumb against the locker’s sensor and groan. Oh hell! Did I give the mafia my fingerprints?
I jerk out my gym bag, unable to stop myself from thinking about Violet again. Violet, looking older than Gran. Violet, looking terrified of me. Fighting Bert. Breaking the library door.
I feel the anger coursing through me. Anger I can’t control. With an outraged shout, I slam my first into the locker. Pain radiates up my arm, but the metal doesn’t so much as bend. Spelled lockers. I swear, if this dream gym is owned by the mafia, I’ll—
“You know I could just turn her for you, right?” Bert asks, piercing my rage-induced haze.
I freeze. Because somehow, even with me being a troll, having a vampire partner, and living in a supernatural town all my life, the thought never crossed my mind.
“Into a vampire,” Bert clarifies when I don’t reply. “She’s your mate. I turn her. Everyone’s happy.”
“But she’d still...” I wave my bruised hand vaguely in the air.
“Look old?” Bert asks.
I nod.
“Age is just a number, man.” Bert shrugs. “You just have to ask yourself what do you want? To lose her forever...”
“Or to be with a gran.”
“She’s your mate,” Bert says, like that’s all that matters. And suddenly, it is.
“Let me take a quick shower, and then we’ll go find her!”
Chapter 11
Violet
I’m curled up on the couch, scrolling through my phone, while Violet sits next to me, reading. She’s already a quarter of the way into Love Blooms, the pink paperback my sister donated to the library. She clucks or chuckles from time to time, but she’s made it absolutely clear I can’t have the book or see what’s so funny until she’s done. Which will probably be tomorrow, since she reads so fast.
For a split second, I wonder if there might be something off about that book... the same way there’s definitely something off about the pumpkin spice lattes at Jewels Cafe. Rumor has it, if a girl named after a jewel takes one sip, she’ll find her fated mates... and a bunch of Silver Springs residents already have.
Could the paperback be spelled, too? Could that be the reason Liam and Cash suddenly showed up?
I watch Violet flip a page and shake my head at the absurdity of the idea. It’s a book, not a latte, and I’m not named after a jewel. Even if Amber had her witchy mate, Julian, cast a mating spell on it, the spell wouldn’t work on me. Plus, why the Chameleon would she give me a spelled book, anyway? She doesn’t know I’m her sister... and who’d ever want the eighty-year-old town librarian to find her mates?
I snort at the absurdity of it and turn back t
o my phone and my secret addiction: prank videos. Nole got me hooked on them ages ago, and it’s definitely the next best thing to being able to pull pranks myself.
I don’t look up from my phone until someone knocks on the door.
My heart nearly stops, and next to me, Violet freezes. Moving as one, we jump into action, going through the steps we rehearsed so many times. I shift into Violet. She drops the paperback onto the couch... and then just stands there with her eyes closed.
“Shift!” I hiss.
“I can’t!” she whispers back, eyes wild. “I’m trying, but I can’t...”
“I can.” Because luckily, she’d shifted into a skunk briefly last week. “You open the door.”
Violet nods and shuffles across the floor while I shift into her skunk and skitter under the couch. Her footsteps echo across the silent apartment, and whoever is on the other side of the door knocks again. Loudly. Impatiently.
“Who is it?” Violet asks.
“Liam.” There’s a pause. “Can we talk?”
My heart skips a beat. Then the lock clicks. The door squeaks open, and two sets of footsteps echo while their owners stop inside. Why two?
Did Liam bring someone with him? Bert? Betty? One of them?
I crawl on my belly across the floor, making sure to stay under the couch and not make any noise. I make it to the edge, just far enough to make out two booted, distinctly male feet. Not Betty then, though Liam probably told her the truth, and now she hates me.
Violet closes the door and the lock clicks shut. Then, one of the booted feet spins around and all hell breaks loose.
“Who the hell are you?” Liam shouts, and I realize my mistake. Just like I could tell the difference between the real troll and my sister shifting into the troll, Liam can tell the difference between Violet and me shifted into Violet.
I scramble to think of what to do when Violet utters the one word that makes my heart break. “Mate?”
Oh, hell no!
Jealousy courses through me. The thought of Violet with my Liam—of anyone with my Liam—makes me see red. Forget that I just met the guy this morning, and we haven’t said two words to each other. None of that matters, because he’s mine.
