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The fabric of his shirt rustled with his shrug, telling her that he wasn’t as tall as he felt to her. Only a little above average instead of a seven foot giant. Good to know.
“I don’t know enough about witches to know—” he said. “Jon gets hunches. Takes a walk just at the right time to find five dollars someone dropped, picks the right lottery number to win ten bucks. That kind of thing. Nothing big, nothing anyone would have noticed if my grandma hadn’t had it stronger.”
The sight was one of those general terms that told Moira precisely nothing. It could mean anything from a little fae blood in the family tree or full-blown witchblood. His brother’s lack of power wouldn’t mean he wasn’t a witch—the magic sang weaker in the men. But fae or witchblood, Alan Choo had been right about it being something that would attract Samhain’s attention. She rubbed her cheekbone even though she knew the ache was a phantom pain touch wouldn’t alter.
Samhain. Did she have a choice? In her dreams she died.
She could feel the intensity of the wolf’s regard, strengthening as her silence continued. Then he told her the final straw that broke her resistance. “Jon’s a cop—undercover—so I doubt your coven knows it. If his body turns up, though, there will be an investigation. I’ll see to it that the witchcraft angle gets explored thoroughly. They might listen to a werewolf who tells them that witches might be a little more than the turbaned fortune-teller.”
Blackmail galled him, she could tell—but he wasn’t bluffing. He must love his brother.
She only had a touch of empathy and it came and went. It seemed to be pretty focused on this werewolf tonight, though.
If she didn’t help him, his brother would die at Samhain’s hands and his blood would be on her as well. If it cost her death, as her dreams warned her, perhaps that was justice served.
“Come in,” Moira said, hearing the grudge in her voice. He’d think it was her reaction to the threat—and the police poking about the coven would end badly for all concerned.
But it wasn’t his threat that moved her. She took care of the people in her neighborhood, that was her job. The police she saw as brothers-in-arms. If she could help one, it was her duty to do so. Even if it was her life for his.
“You’ll have to wait until I get my coffee,” she told him, and her mother’s ghost forced the next bit of politeness out of her. “Would you like a cup?”
“No. There’s no time.”
He said that as if he had some idea about it—maybe the sight hadn’t passed him by either.
“We have until tomorrow night if Samhain has him.” She turned on her heel and left him to follow her or not, saying over her shoulder, “Unless they took him because he saw something. In which case he probably is already dead. Either way there’s time for coffee.”
He closed the door with deliberate softness and followed her. “Tomorrow’s Halloween. Samhain.”
“Kouros isn’t Wiccan, anymore than he is Greek, but he apes both for his followers,” she told him as she continued deeper into her apartment. She remembered to turn on the hall light—not that he’d need it, being a wolf. It just seemed courteous: allies should show each other courtesy. “Like a magician playing slight of hand he pulls upon myth, religion and anything else he can to keep them in thrall. Samhain, the time not the coven, has power for the fae, for Wicca, for witches. Kouros uses it to cement his own, and killing someone with a bit of power generates more strength than killing a stray dog and bothers him about as much.”
“Kouros?” He said it as if it solved some puzzle, but it must not have been important because he continued with no more than a breath of pause. “I thought witches were all women?” He followed her into the kitchen and stood too close behind her. If he were to attack, she wouldn’t have time to ready a spell.
But he wouldn’t attack, her death wouldn’t come at his hands tonight.
The kitchen lights were where she remembered them and she had to take it on faith that she was turning them on and not off,
she could never remember which way the switch worked. He didn’t say anything so she must have been right.
She always left her coffeepot primed for mornings, so all she had to do was push the button and it began gurgling in promise of coffee soon.
“Um,” she said, remembering he’d asked her a question. His closeness distracted her—and not for the reasons it should. “Women tend to be more powerful witches, but you can make up for lack of talent with enough death and pain. Someone else’s, of course, if you’re a black practitioner like Kouros.”
“What are you?” he asked, sniffing at her. His breath tickled the back of her neck—wolves, she’d noticed before, have a somewhat different idea of personal space than she did.
Her machine began dribbling coffee out into the carafe at last, giving her an excuse to step away. “Didn’t Alan tell you? I’m a witch.”
He followed; his nose touched her where his breath had sensitized her flesh and she probably had goose flesh on her toes from the zing that he sent through her. “My pack has a witch we pay to clean up messes. You don’t smell like a witch.”
He probably didn’t mean anything by it, he was just being a wolf. She stepped out of his reach in the pretense of getting a coffee cup, or rather he allowed her to escape.
Alan was right, she needed to get out more. She hadn’t so much as dated in… well a long time. The last man’s reaction to seeing what she’d done to herself was something she didn’t want to repeat.
This man smelled good, even with the smell of his sweat teasing her nose. He felt strong and warm, promising to be the strength and safety that she’d never had outside of her own two hands. Dominant wolves took care of their pack—doubtless something she’d picked up on. And then there was the possibility of death hovering over her.
Whatever the ultimate cause, his nearness and the light touch of breath on her skin sparked her interest in a way that she knew he’d have picked up on. You can’t hide sexual interest from something that can trail a hummingbird on the wing. Neither of them needed the complication of sex interfering in urgent business, even assuming he’d be willing.
“Witchcraft gains power from death and pain. From sacrifice and sacrificing,” she told him coolly, pouring coffee in two mugs with steady hands. She was an expert in sacrifice. Not sleeping with a strange werewolf who showed up on her doorstep didn’t even register in her scale.
