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I should get a new bodyguard.
A really ugly one.
Cain cleared his throat, and my cheeks flushed with heat.
Oops.
“I already know what I want you to bring me for this job.”
That sent a different kind of tremor through me, and not a pleasant one. All the warmth I’d gained from Wilder leached out of me and was replaced with a cold dread. Whatever he was about to ask for, I wasn’t going to like it.
Not that I particularly enjoyed any of the things he’d requested in the past. Graverobber wasn’t a line item I’d wanted on my resume.
“Ah, we’re here,” he announced, leaving me in suspense for whatever it was he was going to ask for.
The limo had stopped in front of an old antebellum mansion, which was hard to make out with the growing dark and the car’s tinted window. Cain opened the back door and climbed out, then made a big show of holding it open for me and ushering me through as if I were stepping onto an invisible red carpet.
Outside it was easier to see the distinctive features of the house. All Garden District homes were unique creatures, with no two being exactly the same.
This one was tall, and narrower than some of its more sprawling neighbors. A wrought-iron gate surrounded the large yard with its perfectly manicured lawn and hedges. In addition to the usual magnolia trees I noticed some atypical flora. Elderflower. Devil’s shoestring. Jasmine. Lavender. All things that to the naked eye were just pretty, but to someone in the know they looked like an apothecary in the making.
This was a witch’s garden.
The house itself was red brick with iron scrollwork balconies wrapping around the upper and lower floors. There was a turret on the right-hand side, and all the lights were on within, glowing warm and welcoming. Without curtains to obstruct my view I could see inside and admired the walls packed with heavily burdened bookshelves, dried herbs hanging from a doorjamb.
I felt comforted, and also uneasy, which was a strange balance.
I wanted to go in, but I also didn’t inherently trust any witch Cain would bring me to. I was only just realizing how off-putting it was that Cain knew about my great-grandmother. Which meant, by extension, he knew more about what I really was than I’d originally believed.
That got filed away in my shit to worry about later list.
A list that kept getting longer and longer as the day went on.
Curiosity gnawed at me, and I moved towards the gate, like the house itself was pulling me in. I was the moth to its flame, the fish to its lure. There was something inside those doors waiting for me, and I desperately wanted to find out what it was.
When I glanced at Cain, he was giving me a knowing smile.
He knew what this house would do to me.
In that moment I hated him so ferociously my wolf wanted to rip out his throat.
There’s something violating about a person being able to see your true self when you don’t offer it to them. It was one thing for Wilder to understand me, and I believed he did. It was quite another for Cain to be able to peel back my layers as effortlessly as the sun unfurled the petals of a rose.
I took a step out of his reach, letting Wilder exit the limo behind me. My focus shifted from Cain back to the house, and once again the urge to go inside built up until it became an ache.
“What is this?” I asked.
“If we’re going to catch a demon, we need help. Are you going to trap it?”
My nose wrinkled, and I glared at him. Sure, I’d never caught a demon before. And if Secret’s story about how hard it had been for her to kill one was any indication, I probably wasn’t strong enough to get that monster out of the house.
But it would have been nice if he didn’t point out my inadequacy in front of other members of my pack.
To be fair, though, my shortcomings in this situation had nothing to do with being a werewolf and everything to do with my training as a witch.
I was good. A natural witch was a rarity, and a natural witch who had trained under someone as powerful as the great La Sorcière was a force to be reckoned with. But I was also young and untested, and I didn’t practice as much as I ought to. Like being a violin prodigy who only played once a week, my powers were not up to snuff for something like demon-catching, and I should probably swallow my pride and admit that.
“No. If I could catch it, we wouldn’t be here.”
