“You’re about to be the recipient of a very nasty sour jar spell,” she said.
He laughed. “Play nice, tiny tree witch.”
“Dark witch?” Monroe turned to Ronin. “What dark witch?”
“Did I say dark witch?” Ronin gave him an innocent look. “I don’t remember saying dark witch.”
Monroe studied Cece, and when she didn’t say anything, he said, “The protection spell will help to keep you safe, but Briggs’s size and strength, combined with his protection spell, could allow him to potentially get the best of a witch before she weakened the spell on either of you enough to hurt you seriously.”
He glanced at Tori. “Which is why it’s probably best to have either him or Hudson with her. You’re, um, pretty small.”
“Eh, I’m tougher than I look,” she said with a grin.
“You’re a bunny shifter,” Monroe said.
“A bunny shifter who could kill a man with nothing but a paper clip and a can-do attitude.” Ronin held out his fist to Tori, who bumped it.
“Right. Anyway, the point is, yes, the protection spell will help, but if the witch or witches who are after you are as powerful as Mal says they are, you can’t rely on it alone. You know that, Cece,” Monroe said.
“Fine,” she sighed. “But only one person at my job. Please, Mal.”
“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t you grab a coffee from the kitchen while Briggs and I chat in my office?”
Her anxiety about Briggs losing his job returned with a vengeance, and she gave Briggs a worried look. He didn’t look worried, but she could see his tension in the stiffness of his neck and shoulders.
Willow put her arm around Cece’s shoulders and gave her a soft squeeze. “C’mon, Cece. I’ll make you a coffee and then make it weird by asking you to describe the taste in great detail with every sip you take.”
Cece smiled faintly and, with one final look at Briggs, followed Willow to the kitchen.
“Are you sure a little salt will stop other witches from coming in?” Briggs studied the salt sprinkled along the windowsill in the kitchen and along the door leading to the backyard.
Monroe had just left, and while Briggs was grateful for his help, his bear was still annoyed by the warlock’s attraction to Cece. Briggs spent most of the hour Monroe was at the house, convincing his bear not to tear off the warlock’s head.
“Well, it’s more than just salt,” Cece said. “Monroe’s incantations and spells are part of the protection.”
“Right.” Briggs sat down at the table. Cece was looking through a big leather book, and she picked up the paper with Monroe’s potion requests on it and read through it again before flipping the thick ivory pages of the book.
“Is that a potions book?” Briggs asked.
Cece nodded. “Yes. I’m pretty sure all of the potions Monroe asked for are in this book, but I want to confirm. If they aren’t, I’ll have to look them up online. I need to go to Charissa’s potion shop this week to pick up some supplies. She’s open late on Thursday, so I can go after work.”
“Give me the address of the potions shop,” Briggs said. “I’ll do some security checks of the parking lot and surrounding area before I take you there on Thursday.”
“It won’t be you,” Cece said, flipping another page, “Tori’s on security duty that day.”
She didn’t sound the least bit upset that he wouldn’t be with her, and his bear made a very undignified whimper at his mate’s casualness.
That casual tone still in her voice, she looked up at him. “Unless you convinced Mal you didn’t need time off?”
“He wouldn’t budge,” Briggs said.
Obvious disappointment flooded her face, and his bear perked up, growling happily and acting like a cub given a handful of fat grubs.
“That’s a good thing, right? A person shouldn’t be working twenty-four/seven,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah,” she echoed with a soft sigh. “Will you tell me what Mal said in your meeting? Did you, um, get in trouble?”
