Page 18 of Wretched Thorns

“Watch.”

The image in the water shifted. The shadows in the corners of that dark room were moving. Not the way shadows move when light changes. This was something else. Something deliberate. They seemed to lean toward Serena, reaching for her like hands in the darkness. And Serena was reaching back.

“Mon Dieu,” Tara breathed.

“That man, the one who has her.” Grandmère’s voice turned to steel. “I know his kind. Parasites. They take what do no belong to them. They find people with gifts and they feed on them, drain them dry, keep them weak and ignorant so they never learn to fight back.”

“He’s been feeding on Serena?”

“For years, I think. Since before she left him. Maybe since before she met him.” Grandmère waved her hand over the water, and the image dissolved. “That’s why she was always so tired, chère. Why she felt empty. It wasn’t just what he did to her mind. He was taking something else. Something she did not know she had.”

Tara stared at the now-still water. All those years watching Serena fade. All those phone calls where she sounded exhausted, diminished. She’d blamed Marcus, and she’d been right, but she’d thought it was psychological. Not literal feeding. Not a monster wearing a man’s face.

“How do we find her?”

Grandmère moved to the cloth bag beside her chair and upended it onto the table. Small bones scattered across the worn wood, yellowish-white and polished smooth.

“The dreams show me pieces, the scrying showed me a little more, but not enough. Not where she is. Not how to get to her.” She gathered the bones, her movements ritual and precise. “I need something more. Something or someone who already has a connection to her, stronger than the charm.”

“Use me.” Tara held out her hands. “We’ve been friends for a long time now.”

She touched her granddaughter’s face, and then plucked a strand of hair from her head, dropping it into the scrying bowl. The hair sizzled as it struck the surface, but the image remained unchanged. Grandmère clicked her tongue in disappointment.

“Is no good, chère. We need a much stronger bond. Like family, blood…”

“Like pack?” Tara asked. “The Voss brothers. She’s been living with them for months.”

“Is rare for wolves to make pack bonds with a human.” Her grandmother’s dark eyes found Tara’s. “They have strict laws.”

Tara thought about the way Serena talked about them. The heat in her voice. The way she’d started to glow when she mentioned them, like something inside her was finally waking up.

“But is she human? Would they have recognized her gifts? I mean, she was getting close to them, you know, and wolves are protective of their own.”

Grandmère nodded slowly. “Maybe, maybe no, but we could at least ask.”

She threw the bones. They scattered across the table in a pattern Tara couldn’t read, but Grandmère’s breath caught.

She gathered the bones again.

“Magnolia Creek is no far from here, and the bones say we will be there soon—”

A sound from outside cut her off. Tires on gravel. An engine cutting out. A car door slamming.

Grandmère’s head snapped toward the window. Her eyes narrowed. “We have company.”

Tara was on her feet before her grandmother finished speaking, moving toward the door. Through the window, she could see a black truck parked behind her car. A man was climbing out of it, tall and broad-shouldered, moving with that fluid grace she’d learned to recognize many years ago.

Wolf.

But not one of the Voss brothers. This one was bigger, darker, with a scar running along his jaw and an expression that suggested he ate nails for breakfast.

“Stay here,” Tara told her.

“No, child.” Grandmère was already reaching for something on the shelf beside the door. A jar of something dark. “That be Dex Fontaine. He runs with the Voss boys.”

Something about him set Tara on edge. She didn’t wait for more explanation. She pushed through the screen door and onto the porch, putting herself between the wolf and her grandmother’s house.

“That’s far enough.”