“Fair enough.” I lingered on the porch, gaze trained on movement outside the stable. Octavia appeared, dressed in a slouchy pair of denim overalls and a green long sleeve underneath. She carried two buckets, sloshing water onto the ground every other step. My gaze hooked on the curve of her waist and how her hips swayed when she walked.
My throat tightened as I recalled the tremor in her hands last night when she clung to me. The wetness on her cheeks as she tried to breathe in after coughing up sand.
“You should know my cute job almost resulted in the death of my client last night,” I said, not removing my eyes from Octavia for one second. She paused at the pen’s gate. One horse—Frog, I believe it was, with his somber step—waited for her on the other side.
Opal’s humor faded. “Damn. How close was the call?”
“She was nearly buried alive while she slept.”
“Did you have to resuscitate her?”
I winced, remembering the second I spent frozen in panic. Jonah had to wait for me, needing instructions. And Wilson had called from downstairs, desperate for an update. All the while Octavia had been unresponsive, her skin as cold as the sheets she’d lain in.
I’d almost lost her. And while everyone waited for me to figure it out, I couldn’t help but get covered in the stickiness of my self-doubt and the menacing voice in the back of my mind that repeated,if you were better, you could have prevented this.
Because I must have missed something in the assessment. There was no way a better hunter would have missed the ghost being strong enough to target a client with lethal force. I’d missed something and Octavia nearly paid for my mistake with her life.
I wouldn’t let it happen again.
“No. She was unresponsive for a couple of seconds but eventually started breathing. And talking. Coughed up some dirt. Not enough to convince her this haunting’s real, but enough to make me…” I swallowed, voice dipping out.
“Hey, hey.” Opal’s voice melted, reminiscent of thesoothing tone our mother used after jobs gone wrong. “Deep breath.”
“I’m fine.” I almost snapped. An emotional hunter should always be pulled off a job. That was the only Guild rule I stood firmly by. But I couldn’t leave. I needed to see this through.
“Okay.” Opal gave me a beat to recover before moving on. “So, you’ve got a cat five on your hands?”
I hummed in affirmation.
“You haven’t done one of those since you were with us.”
I scratched the back of my neck, annoyed at how unprepared I felt. And how Opal seemed to second my evolving nerves.
“You’re in for a fight. Do you need backup?” she asked.
“Nico and December are on their way.” I started down the porch steps.
“Cute,” she said. “Now, do you need backup?”
I laughed. “We’ll be fine. I just…need to focus. Not let this noise get to me.”
“What noise?”
The trek toward the stable proved slipperier than the previous day. Thankfully, I maintained my balance and kept ownership of my shoes.
“Do you ever feel you’ve reached your peak while hunting?” I paused for a second and lowered my voice as if someone could hear me out here in the quiet, heavy morning. “Like you should move out of the way for someone else to do a better job?”
“No,” she said with little thought because, much like our other sisters, Opal knew who she was from the moment she’d taken her first breath. “Do you?”
“I was just considering existential questions for my next book,” I murmured.
“Sequel?” She was smiling again. A car door slammed shut on her end. “I can’t wait. You know I was obsessed with the first one.”
“Thanks, at least someone was.” Plenty of people loved it. But it was one person who didn’t, who elicited flutters in my stomach. Who knew being disliked could be more intriguing than being loved?
“Keep your location on for all of us.” An engine roared to life, competing with Opal’s next words. “And send me all the info you have on this ranch. I’ll look and see if I can catch anything that could speed up the process. For a fee, of course.”
“Send me your bill,” I teased.
