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I shook my head while popping the car door shut with my hip. Tall grass tickled my fingers as I headed toward the porch. I turned on the flashlight feature on my phone to light up the door, staring at the rusty locks and doorknob.
It had been a hot minute since either of us had come to this particular safe house. Without the war, there wasn’t much of a need to hide. No recent battles had chased us in this direction. Though it seemed useless, we didn’t like being unprepared. Because of our work for the supernatural population, it was important for us to have a private place to go in the event of a robbery or another war.
Or just to think.
I tapped the deadbolt lock and whispered, “It’s me, your honey bee.”
A series of clicks erupted from the door. I pushed on the metal, listening to the floor creak beneath me as I flashed the light around the untouched room. Something felt weird about this place. Something felt unfamiliar and empty.
The door slapped shut behind me, making me jump. I breathed through a panic attack as I flipped on the lights, observing the compact space for the first time in over a year. Dusty books sat on a bookshelf across from me near a fold-up table. A rugged Italian leather couch sat off to the side near a kitchen. Beyond that was the hallway leading to two private bedrooms, both relatively small but cozy.
Yellow wallpaper with sunflowers, always sunflowers. Always some kind of flowers with my father. I turned around to lock the door and checked the magical wards. Rust clung to the glass display, an invention of my father for us to keep track of certain spells. It acted a lot like a touchpad with a coded language for us to determine what needed sprucing and what needed to be ditched.
Shoot, the entire system was outdated. We hadn’t updated these wards in years. I took back my previous thoughts about Merlin being impressed. With this useless set of spells, he would probably laugh.
And maybe piss himself laughing.
The porch creaked. My fingers froze over the glass panel as I tried to ground myself. I hadn’t done my usual protocols of checking the perimeter with a mental magical scan. I didn’t think it was necessary because I was out in the middle of Sumter, where my closest neighbor was miles away.
There wasn’t a damn soul in this town that would want to come this way. Finding the driveway off the main road was nearly impossible, so being followed wasn’t an option either.
Unless it wasn’t a person, but a thing out there.
Don’t be silly, GG, I thought. There’s nobody out there. I’ll prove it, too.
But as I whipped open the door, I didn’t have time to realize my mistake as darkness encompassed my vision and sent me to the ground.
Chapter 19 - Eric
I hadn’t heard from Regina in a week.
That wasn’t exactly something I wanted to think about while walking up to a diner in Beaufort with my daughter, but the fact remained regardless of the situation. Regina texted me about needing space, so I gave her space. I also kept a wide berth with my daughter in case she was staying over there.
But as the week progressed, I noticed the stretch of silence. I realized that the road in front of my daughter’s apartment remained empty of that familiar Honda Civic. Nobody walked up to the porch or left the apartment building unless it was Kiara herself. And today, she had walked over to knock on my door to see if I wanted to grab dinner at Joey’s.
Anger swelled in my chest as I reached into my pocket and traced the black tourmaline stone Regina had given me. Over a weekend, we had created a whole relationship full of memories. Things had been popping up all week that reminded me of her. Goddess forbid I saw anything resembling a meadow.
Thankfully, there weren’t many streams in Beaufort. I visited the beach once or twice to clear my head but became confused. I kept checking my phone and bedroom window for a sign of her, anything.
But there was nothing.
She had left me in the dust, just like Teresa.
The bell jingled on Joey’s door as Kiara tugged it open. She held the door for me and smiled weakly as I rushed past her to get to the counter. Red stripes lined the wall behind the chrome vintage counter. A waitress dressed in red and white with poofy blonde hair and a visor grinned, revealing a row of pearly white teeth and a pink ball of gum. Her fawn-tan skin looked delicate, primmed, along with her trim brows over her blue eyes.
She smacked the gum around her mouth. “Two?”
Kiara and I nodded. We followed the gum-chewing woman to a red leather booth near a gaping window on the right side of the diner. Beaufort sparkled beyond the glass pane, making me think of the way the sunlight rippled across Regina’s face in the morning.Glorious, bright, inviting.
I sighed as I slumped into the booth, accepting a red menu from the gum-chewing woman. That sound could make a wolf lose his head. Luckily, I had a good amount of training to help me tune that sort of annoying thing out. After glancing at the menu, I handed it back to her with my order of a bacon burger and crispy fries. Kiara ordered the same thing, along with two strawberry shakes, extra cherries.
The woman smiled, tucked the menus under her arm, and pulled her phone out of her apron as she walked back to the counter. She yelled out some garbled nonsense to the cook through the window without taking her eyes off her phone. Her thumbs flew with expert precision across the screen. The fact that she could focus on texting and yelling out an order at the same time was impressive.
Kiara drummed the table. The noise felt weird, muted. I was walking the line between last weekend and the present. Everything felt like it was Regina-coded, but she wasn’t even around. She wasn’t answering my texts.
I looked at my daughter. “Have you heard from Regina?”
