Mal studied him for what felt like a fucking eternity before saying, “Garth, you’re on the pro bono job. Briggs, you’re doing mall security.”
His polar bear growled so loudly, it made his fucking brain reverberate against his skull. Before he could stop himself, Briggs said, “Are we sure Garth can handle the assignment?”
“What the fuck did you just say?” Garth’s horns poked through his forehead, and his stocky body swelled.
“Garth, cool it,” Bishop said.
“The asshole just insulted me,” Garth said before snorting loudly.
“Knock it off,” Bishop said.
Garth took a few deep breaths as Mal, his gaze way too sharp for Briggs’s liking, said, “You can have the pro bono job or the mall job. Take your pick, Briggs.”
Ignoring his bear’s growls, Briggs said, “Mall job.”
CHAPTER 5
“This is bad, Cece.”
“Kinsley!” Maisie gave the pretty brunette a pointed look.
Kinsley leaned back in the booth. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it if I think our best friend is in danger, Maize.”
“I’m not asking you to sugarcoat, I’m just saying there’s a better way to express our worry.” Maisie tugged on a piece of her auburn hair, a sure sign that she was stressed out. “Cece, you have to go to the police.”
“And tell them what?” Cece poked at the pasta on her plate. “That a woman who communicates with ghosts says my dead aunt believes a powerful witch family is after me?”
Maisie wrinkled her nose. “That does sound…”
“Crazy,” Kinsley said.
Cece waited for Maisie to chastise Kinsley again, but she stayed silent. Probably because it did sound crazy.
“I mean, I don’t even know for sure that this Willow woman isn’t crazy, right?” she said. “It really could have been just a random mugging.”
“Maybe,” Maisie said, but her dark brown eyes didn’t lose that sheen of worry. “But what if she isn’t crazy?”
“We need Elora,” Kinsley said. “If there are a bunch of witches after you, Elora can stop them. She’s, like, the most powerful witch in the world now.”
“One, she’s more powerful, but she isn’t the most powerful witch in the world,” Cece said, “and two, you know as well as I do that we can’t contact her right now.”
She stared at her plate again, hoping that Maisie and Kinsley couldn’t see how close she was to tears. Fuck, she missed Elora with an intensity that gave her a stomachache, but nothing could be done about it. Elora and her boyfriend Jonah had spent Christmas in the old country with Elora’s grandmother. Once Helen realized how much Elora’s power had grown in the last few months, she had insisted Elora stay to do the Rituals of Azeri. They had gone deep into the mountains where cell coverage was nonexistent, and Cece had no idea when Elora would return.
“There has to be some way to contact her,” Kinsley said. “A satellite phone or something.”
“There isn’t,” Cece said. “The rituals work better when they’re cut off from the outside world, so they deliberately don’t allow themselves any technology to communicate.”
“I still don’t understand why she even has to do the rituals,” Maisie said.
“It’s to help her control her new power better,” Cece said. “There’s more to it than that, but…”
“But you’re scared and sad as shit and don’t feel like explaining the details,” Kinsley said.
“I’m okay,” Cece said.
“No, honey, you’re not.” Kinsley reached across the booth and took her hand. “And it’s okay that you’re not. You’ve lost your aunt, your best friend, temporarily, and found out your family was lying to you for your entire life, just in the last few months. No one would be okay under those circumstances.”
Her bottom lip trembling, Cece took the tissue that Maisie shoved into her free hand and wiped at the tears sliding down her cheeks.
