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Zoe’s brow arched. “You gave a key to your bar to a homeless shifter?”
“I don’t know her story, but she won’t leave that alleyway. It gets cold in the winter.” I shook my head, realizing I didn’t need to justify or explain this to the witch who’d been digging in my head. “It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want her to freeze.”
She hummed, then returned to her coffee. She was silent a long time, staring off somewhere in the distance. That suited me just fine. All of this was too weird. I wanted to run back home, but I knew in my bones that my father would kill me on sight. I pushed my coffee away, suddenly too nauseous to finish it.
Zoe stood, then grabbed my trash. “You’re done.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded.
“Good. Let’s get you some clothes and basics to tide you over till we figure all this shit out,” she said.
“Well, you see, the thing is, I didn’t exactly grab my wallet on my way out the door,” I said sarcastically.
“I figure the least Luke can do after getting you mixed up in this is to buy you a few things.” She tossed the remains of our breakfast into a trash can.
My brow furrowed slightly before I put a mask of indifference on my face. Figuring her out was going to be harder than I expected. She seemed loyal to Luke, but she was oddly supportive of me. It was enough to drive me mad. I knew I couldn’t trust anyone here, but Zoe was so likable. And she reminded me far too much of Jasmine.
“You’re going to check on my friend, right?” I asked. “And not hurt her.”
“Now that I know she’s a witch, I’m going to do it personally. I thought it was some dopey boyfriend of something. That I wasn’t worried about. Those male shifters always seem to be fine. No offense, but I was already trying to figure out how to tell you he’d already moved on cause that’s what I expected to see,” she admitted.
“Been there,” I said. “And agree.” I had yet to meet a shifter who was loyal unless there was a mating bond in place. Often, it was out in the open, with both partners exploring other alternatives without bothering to go through the process of breaking up. It never bothered me unless it caused a brawl. That was where I drew the line. You damage things in my bar, and we’re going to have a problem.
I winced as I fell into step behind Zoe. Was I even going to have a bar to go back to? Had my dad already sold it or passed it off to someone else? Or had he simply left it to get trashed by angry shifters who were looking to pillage my liquor and then show their displeasure that I wasn’t there to serve them.
That thought darkened my mood even more. That bar was my whole life, but there wasn’t a lot of respect or pleasure that came from the position. It was simply the path of least resistance; the best option for me out of a whole slew of worse choices.
Shit.I was not taking this whole being kidnapped thing well. You’d think I’d be more pissed at this new pack for grabbing me in the middle of the night, but the more I dwelled on it, the more I realized my pack, my father, was the worst offender.
Maybe I would finally get the courage to pack up and leave when this was over. We’d figure some way to fix Jasmine’s tattoo issue. Hell, maybe Zoe knew a trick. I was going to have to see if I could get close enough to ask her about that. I owed at least that much to Jasmine.
We stopped in front of a store calledKiki’s Collection. When we’d arrived, I wasn’t able to discern what the shop might sell. The windows were painted with a mountain scene of blue lakes and triangle-shaped pine tree dotted mountains. You couldn’t see inside the shop.
“Kiki’s is about as good as it gets here,” Zoe said. “She goes into the cities about twice a year and buys stock. So whatever she’s got, is what she’s got, but it’s better than the alternatives.”
Kiki’s was like nothing I’d ever seen. We had a general store, but usually we went to the nearest city to grab things when we needed them. While it wasn’t easy to get out of Copper Springs if you were someone like me without a car, shifters from our pack could come and go as they pleased. Which, sort of explained why Zoe had said it wasn’t tough to get in and out. I wasn’t sure why I’d never really thought of that before. It seemed challenging enough to me without a car or a reason to leave.
I glanced at the racks of clothes on circular displays and at the walls of clothes covering every bare inch of wall space. There was everything you could imagine from overalls and flannel, to punk rock studded leather, to ballgowns. When did a shifter even need a ballgown?
“Zoe, how nice to see you,” a woman called from somewhere in the overflowing piles of clothes. She seemed to emerge out of nowhere from between a rack of jeans and sashayed over to meet Zoe.
I had to guess this was Kiki. From the way she moved to her long limbs and slim figure, everything about her screamed grace and elegance. How she was existing in this closed-off city, I had no idea. She looked like she belonged somewhere else. Anywhere but here.
Her long, straight honey-brow hair hung freely down her back to her waist and she had stunning green eyes. “You must be Morgan.”
“Kiki?” I asked.
She smiled. “The one and only.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Well, then, you’re not the brutal savage half the town is saying you are,” Kiki replied.
“So that’s what they’re saying?” I asked.
“You know how these small towns like to gossip,” she said. “It’s the worst part about living here. In the city, you don’t get the gossip, but that’s only because nobody knows their neighbors and none of them would bother to help you if you were in trouble. I guess you take the good with the bad,” she said.
I wondered what her story was. She didn’t seem like she’d grown up here. I shoved down the curiosity. It probably wasn’t the best time to ask personal questions.
