by KT Strange
“Oh shit,” said a second guy, his hair a dark sandy blond, with another pair of blue eyes that weren’t narrowed like the first’s. He was one of the shortest, and more slender, of the guys, his muscles long and lean. Even still, he filled out his shirt without an issue.
Phoenixcry were men, sure that was a word of truth, but they were also werewolves, and I bet that wasn’t in their bio. Also not in their bio? That werewolves weren’t supposed to be anywhere near witches.
I was so fucked.
Three
“I think she’s hyperventilating,” said the second guy who’d spoken, the blond with the lean muscles who looked like he was the youngest out of them all, staring at me openly although his expression wasn’t unkind.
“Heartbeat’s up,” said the first, his blue eyes narrowing further into something I would swear was a smoulder. He shook his head, dark hair falling into his face.
“Cash, Ace, be quiet for a minute,” there was a taller, light-blond wolf at the back of the group, and I noticed he had a shadow of a guy behind him, exactly the same height as him with the same features, but slightly different style of hair . . . twins. Well, I thought without humor, it’s not like twins are all that unheard of with werewolves. Shit, werewolves. They were werewolves, and the biggest crime of all, as they stared at me, I couldn’t help but immediately feel my face flush. They were hot in a way that was criminal, especially for monsters. Was that how they trapped people? With—with their flexing forearms and devastatingly handsome faces?
“Where’s Willa?” I asked, finding my voice, knowing that every second I shared a room with them I was in danger. They didn’t know that, because they didn’t know I was a crappy spell-caster, and barely had the most basic control over my powers. It’s not like there was an all out war between witches and werewolves, because there wasn’t, but we didn’t as a general rule like each other, and we never fraternized. Bad things happened when wolves and witches hung out.
“Her phone call started early,” said the tall, bossy blond wolf. He shouldered his way to the front of the group, their clear leader, as he surveyed me. I immediately tensed, and shivered as his eyes moved up and down my body. I tried not to do the same to him, because he was built, pounds of muscle that threatened to put a guy like Chris Hemsworth to shame. The blond wolf let out a soft whistle. “I didn’t think they made witches in hot,” he said. His words hit me like scalding water and I froze. Was he making a pass at me?
“Finn,” snarled his twin, equally hot, equally muscled, but a lot more grouchy-looking. Finn held up a hand to hush his brother.
“I know, I know, just relax.” Finn crossed his arms over his chest and gave me another once-over. While he did I averted my gaze, and found there was really no safe place to look—five pairs of eyes: one brown and four blue, met me wherever I glanced. I suddenly wished that there was another set of doors for me to escape through, but the only way out of the room was through those five sets of broad shoulders. “So what’s a witch doing, posing as a mundane, at our record label? I’d swear this was a joke if it wasn’t so damn serious,” Finn said. He hitched his shoulder and one of two men with dark hair, the one that hadn’t already spoken took a step forward.
“Stay right there,” I said, harnessing the very thin control I had over my power to put thunder in my voice. The sound of it rolled out of me, and it had an immediate effect. Have you ever seen a wolf put up it’s hackles? It was like that, in human form, times five. I did my best not to lose it and stood firm.
Cash or Ace, because I wasn’t sure which was which, but it was the one with dark hair that had spoken first, growled at me.
“Oh is that how it’s gonna be?” he asked, pushing past Finn. He would have walked toward me, except Finn grabbed him by the shoulder, and Finn had a good inch or two on him and a bit more muscle.
“We’re in the goddamn label office, Cash,” Finn growled low under his breath, solving the mystery of who was Cash and who was Ace, but not offering me any solution to my predicament.
“She’s by herself,” said the other dark-haired man, not Cash. “Why’re you here by yourself? Are you helping hunters?”
I frowned. He said it with a look around the room as if the ancient order of men and women would leap from the shoulders to cut him down right then and there. Hunters had been humans trained and guided by witches back, oh, at least a few hundred years ago, to murder werewolves that stepped out of line and caused trouble with mundanes. But that practice had been quickly been abandoned as too barbaric, plus werewolves had become increasingly rare, so such incidences hadn’t been so much of an issue anymore.
“Yeah, like that’s a thing,” I said with a roll of my eyes, trying to hide my nerves. If they wanted to fall on me and rip my throat out of my neck, they could, and I was pretty powerless to stop them. I had my binder in my backpack. I might, for a second, be able to beat one of them with it, or at least protect my face so my body could be identified.
Finn’s twin moved, after standing stock still for long moments.
“You’re going to answer his question, and if you’re lying, we’ll know,” he said, his voice firmer than Finn’s, so much that you couldn’t mistake him for his twin even if their tone and pitch were similar. They were seriously worried about hunters? I shook my head.
“I’m not—I’m just here to do an internship,” I said, figuring honesty was the best policy and if they were one of those paranoid packs of werewolves, that was the best bet. If I outright said that hunters didn’t exist, they might not believe I was being truthful.
Finn’s twin, and the rest of them, relaxed minutely. The hackles weren’t quite down, but it was close enough that their shoulders relaxed out.
“What did we do to the universe to end up with a witch for our first label manager?” Finn asked. The dark-haired man who wasn’t Cash snorted and asked,
“The better question is, why are they giving us an intern for a manager? That wasn’t in the contract. I need to go talk to Troy.” He turned on his heel, and without another word, left the room. I watched him go, my eyes popping wide. Had he seriously just… left? Just like that?
“Charlie manages the business end of things,” Finn said, gesturing to the couches. “Along with playing rhythm guitar. You’ll get to know him well if you’re the one the label has assigned to us. Let’s sit.”
Slowly the other men approached the couches, and me. With each step they took, my nerves lit on fire again and again and I thought my heart was going to pound it’s way right out of my chest.
“What are you doing?” I asked as they sat down on the couch across from me, their attitudes ranging from nonchalant to curious to vaguely hostile.
Cash’s lips twisted up in a small smirk: his expression had been more on the hostile end of the spectrum.
“Having our first band meeting with our label-appointed manager,” he said, sarcasm clinging to each word.
“Yeah that’s not happening,” I said, and grabbed my backpack. All four of the remaining guys froze, eyes on me and my bag. “It’s got a laptop in it, my binder with handouts, and a granola bar,” I said flatly. “No daggers made by the light of the moon to cut your hearts out. Trust me. That’s the last thing I want to do right now. I’m going to go to Willa and tell her I can’t work with you.”
Ace, the sandy blond, frowned, and actually looked sad.
“What? You’re not gonna . . . but we’re great!” he protested. Cash let out a scoffing bark of laughter which was quelled when Finn’s twin elbowed him, hard, in the side.
“Yeah, I heard about you guys, apparently you’re amazing, but you’re also werewolves, and I’m a witch. This?” I gestured from me to them. “This doesn’t happen. Not even the slightest bit. Not ever.”
Finn’s eyebrow kicked up and he looked at each of the other werewolves in turn.
“You’re here in the mundane world, right?” he asked. I knew he was leading me down a path I didn’t want to travel but I couldn’t help but
answer him anyway. Werewolves, aside from being formidable in strength even in human form, able to shape-shift into large wolves among other things, were also incredible orators. If I had to guess at why they had enjoyed a meteoric rise from unknown band to signing to a good label in a short period of time, it would have been because of the innate powers they had, that was threaded through every fiber of their being. It wasn’t like witches, where we had to call on our powers, do rituals, learn to harness it. For wolves, they were magic, every inch of them, and every time they opened up their mouths it was a siren call to any human or witch listening. It’s why they were so dangerous and witches kept their distance. It was part of the reason that any association between a witch or a werewolf was forbidden.
My family was keeping tabs on me, I was sure, probably thinking that I was just out in the mundane world, sowing my wild oats, and that one day I’d come to my senses and come back to the fold. But if they found out I was fraternizing with werewolves? My freedom would be over. They bundle me up, wrap me in magic bindings so tight I’d never escape, and they’d drag me screaming back to the Council of Seven and the family hearth.
That couldn’t happen. I’d worked too hard to establish my own life, a true life without the aid of an impressive magical lineage and more money than sense. I had student debt, something unheard of to witches, but a mark of pride that I carried showing that I’d left my old self and old life behind.
“Give her a minute, she’s thinking,” one of them muttered at the edge of my attention and I jerked.
“Yeah, thinking that every second I spend in this room is a bad idea,” I said. “It . . . it was real, or whatever, but peace out,” I said, and then bolted. It was over before it began, and I should have known better than to run from an apex predator, or four of them. Finn’s twin was up and over the back of the couch in a split-second, shoving himself between me and the door. His hand reached out and wrapped around my hip, his other one grabbing onto my wrist. We spun, out of sight of the employees on the production floor, and then I was pinned up against the wall with probably two hundred pounds, or more, of muscled, angry werewolf.
His blue eyes were hot as he stared down at me. I’d never been near a werewolf. I’d never even imagined what it would be like to be this close to one. The wall was firm and cold against my back, but the wolf in front of me was firm but not anything close to cold. His heat would radiate off of him into me. My skin screamed, and I swallowed reflexively. His scent was thick, the hint of smoke at the back of my tongue as I inhaled it, smoke and the wet, crushed smell of pine-needles.
“You’re going to hear us out,” he said, and I felt the weight of his presence press down on me, demanding that I listen, probably the same feeling he’d felt when I’d told them all to stay where they were. I struggled to breathe, the power in him too strong for me and my feeble, underdeveloped willpower.
Deep down though, it was there, a small spark of molten gold inside me, the source of the thunder and lightning that made up my being. With unsteady mental fingers, I reached for it and held on.
“Back off,” I gasped, the words crackling with power. With a low snarl, he shoved away, but only a few feet. I shuddered as the pull of what he’d asked of me still raced through my veins, demanding that I sit down on the couch, and listen to them, as if that was a perfectly normal thing for a witch to do with a pack of werewolves.
There was no way I was going to give him what he wanted, especially if he thought pushing me around and bullying me was going to be how he accomplish his desires. The other wolves had gotten to their feet, unsteadiness and uncertainty on their faces and in their body language.
“Let me make this clear to you, and listen up, because I’m only going to say it once,” I started off, my words slow as I had to drag them from within myself. The men all stiffened, Finn’s twin most of all. “I was a witch, but I’m not one now, I’m a mundane.“
“Bullsh—” One of them started to say, Cash, and I jerked my gaze over at him. He shut up, and I felt powerful for one moment before I remembered I was writing checks with my tongue and eyes that my powers couldn’t cash. Better not push them too far.
“You know I’m here, at the label. I know you’re here, at the label. I’m going to go ask Willa to be reassigned to something else, anything else, and we are going to leave each other alone. I’m not working with hunters, and I want to be left alone. I’m not any more of a witch than any of you are.” I watched them carefully as I spoke, glad that the door was at my back and I could slip right out of it when I was ready. One of the blonds, Ace, looked almost crestfallen at my proclamation, his shoulders rounded. No, I thought, you are not going to feel bad just cause some werewolf is giving you puppy-eyes. That’s . . . that shouldn’t even be a thing.
My eyebrows pulled together and glowered at them all.
“But I want you to know, if I hear even the smallest whisper that you’ve been pushing around any other girl here at the label, I’m gonna forget that I’m a mundane and do everything in my power to make your lives living hell, do you understand me?” I didn’t need to use that last touch of power, and I felt my legs twitch as they threatened to give out on me. Magic is like a muscle. Use it or lose it. And I hadn’t been using it for three years. I felt exhausted from my little show of dominance, but I needed to put the fear in these werewolves if I was even going to have a hope at finishing my internship. And even that idea was seriously questionable. My every instinct was telling me to run back to Max and bury myself in a blanket burrito, letting Max push cookies in through one end of my self-created nest.
I took a breath, about to unleash more on them, to let go of all the pent up fear and stress that their sudden appearance in my life had caused, but thought better of it.
“Thanks,” I said, and turned on my heel and bolted out of the meeting room. Thanks? Thanks?! You threaten a pack of werewolves and end it off with a super-scary ‘Thanks’!? I tried not to give myself too hard of a time, as I booked it to the stairs that would lead outside. I needed to go grab a coffee. Willa would be on her call for awhile yet, so I had some time, plus one of the wolves would be talking to her. I probably had ten minutes. It was stupid, to leave without telling anyone, but on the list of crappy things I had done or had done to me that day, it was near the bottom.
Time. I just needed a little bit of time to figure out my next move, and if I would ask Willa for other work, or have to go back to my internship coordinator at school and ask for a whole new internship. Putting as much distance as possible between myself and the singing werewolf pack was my only goal. Determined that everything would look a little more rosy after some caffeine, I shoved thoughts of wolves out of my mind, and ducked out the front door of the label office.
Four
“No. Not happening,” Willa stared at me flatly as I flailed through a reason I couldn’t work with Phoenixcry. Obviously she hadn’t bought my lame excuse of I’m seriously too much of a fangirl, please don’t make me work with them, I’ll vom.
“Please,” I said, “I’ll do anything. Sort demo tapes. I’ll listen through demos. I’ll—please.” I’d run out of good reasons for her to let me off the hook in terms of managing Phoenixcry, not that I’d had any good reasons to begin with anyway. I’d texted Max during my quick coffee run that something seriously crazy had gone down, like magic crazy. She was in class, because she hadn’t texted me back yet.
I needed my best friend at my side right then and there, but couldn’t have her. I’d have to deal with the situation myself. I’d gotten myself out of my family’s home and away from the life I’d known just fine, why was I having so much trouble now with this whole adulting thing?
Willa sighed and rubbed her temples for a moment and muttered something that sounded like a request for patience.
“Look, you were seriously, really, highly recommended to me, Darcy. You seem nice. I can overlook the lateness on your first day, because it happens, but I’m not going to reassign you from Phoenixcry mos
tly because I don’t have anyone to replace you with. Please don’t make me be a bitch about this and tell your professor that you were useless, because if you keep pushing this issue, that’s what’s going to happen here.” She gave me a kind, almost sympathetic smile. “Please, also, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know you’re not a crazy fangirl. What’s going on? I know, they’re super hot and that can be kind of intimidating. That’s okay.”
I stared at her and swallowed, trying not to let myself spiral down into a miserable ball of self pity.
“But . . .” I started and fell quiet when I saw the expression on Willa’s face. I was inches from getting a blistering lecture at best, or a phone call to my professor about how I’d utterly failed at my placement. Caught between the danger I was putting myself in by staying, and possibly flunking out of my internship year at college, I folded.
I’d just have to stay smart, and do whatever it took to keep my family from finding out who I was working with. Just because there were werewolves in the building didn’t mean I had anything to do with them, and as their manager, the only times I would have to be in public with them was at shows, and I could always just stay backstage.
It was a pretty pack of lies, but I wrapped it up in a bow and gave it to myself. Whatever it took to finish off my degree, I was going to do. I’d fought so hard for freedom, I wasn’t going to let the fear of my family taking me back home stop me when I’d come so close.
At least for now, until I could go back to school and throw myself down at my professor’s feet and beg to be reassigned.
“Now, do you need me to come back up with you to talk to the band, or can I deal with the sixty-five other fires I have burning right now?” Willa asked. I knew better than to try her patience further.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re an idiot, and you’re forgiven,” she said, reaching for her phone. “Do you know how many students we turned down for this internship? Don’t waste it, Llewellyn, and don’t make me look stupid for picking you.”
