“Where were you?” he asked, wondering at the sort of power that could portal two people simultaneously from a distance of hundreds of miles.
“California,” Macklin said easily. “It’s a good thing Jordan’s so frickin’ powerful. If I’d done this myself, it would have knocked me on my ass.”
Scout stumbled. “Calif—isn’t that three thousand miles away?”
Macklin gave him a wry nod over his shoulder. “It is indeed.”
“But… but that’sAlistairlevel power.”
Macklin snorted. “That is the power of one very determined hedge witch,” he said. “With some training up.”
“And he’s your… your fiancé?” So Scout’s cool older brother was notjustcool, he was alsoqueer,and Scout had never been so happy to be a Quintero.
“Yup. For a year now. Getting married at Beltane, along with four other couples who make up our coven.” He practically hummed with joy. “There’s going to be flowers, and sunshine, and the baby’s going to be toddling around by then—”
“Wait,” Kayleigh said. “Baby?”
“Yes. One of the couples, Josh and Kate, they have a baby. Kid’s spoiled rotten—the apple of the coven’s eye—and she’s barely a potato.”
“This doesn’t sound like… like what hedge witches are,” Scout said doubtfully. It had been drilled into them. If they couldn’t portal by twenty-five, they’d be as useless as a hedge witch, confined to small spells of no consequence, miserable and bitter and making potions to poison the neighbor’s dog. It didnotsound like a big joyous group wedding with a spoiled infant in the midst of people who could teleport themselves across a continent.
Macklin paused, looking around and obviously getting his bearings before turning to Scout. “My boy, you’ve spent your entire life locked in that compound, am I right?”
Scout nodded, suddenly lost and out of his depth.
“How would either of you know what hedge witches—or even regular people—are like? You both have so much to learn.”
Next to him, Kayleigh gave a wicked little cackle. “I can’t wait.”
And with that they broke through the woodland to a shoulder on the side of a busy road. No sooner had Macklin started to look around to see what to do next than a dark sedan veered off the road to the shoulder in front of them. Macklin hauled open the passenger door with obvious relief.
“That was fast!”
“Get in!” came the impatient reply. “And it helps that we’d looked the place up ahead of time and made the reservations before we portaled.”
Kayleigh opened the rear door and slid in, Scout scrambled in afterward, and then he got his first look at Macklin’s fiancé.
And tried not to clutch his heart and gnash his teeth because the guy was taken.
Tall—taller than Macklin, even seated—but younger, closer to Scout’s age, the man had white-blond hair, intense blue eyes, and cheekbones to die for. And a sort of intensity around his mouth, a thing that said nothing got in his way. Wow. Scout would follow this guy anywhere, including three thousand miles across the country through a hole in space and time.
“Where to next?” Macklin asked.
“Well, we’re making a U-turn and going back into town,” Jordan said. “We’ve got reservations at the Holiday Inn there and….” His eyes flickered to Kayleigh and Scout in the back seat, Scout in his white linen ceremonial robes and nothing else and Kayleigh wearing a traditional calf-length cotton dress with clunky practical shoes. “There’s a Walmart there so they can go shopping. And we can get something to eat and go back to the hotel and figure out what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives.”
Scout swallowed hard. Next to him, Kayleigh fumbled for his hand. They laced fingers and squeezed because Jordan was right. They’d just been flung out of their homes and into a world they’d studied about but never lived in.
And then Scout remembered that if it weren’t for Josue and his unconditional love or Macklin and his super-dreamy boyfriend, he and Kayleigh would still be out in the woods alone, trying to figure out what to do.
He turned a serene face to Kayleigh and gave a watery smile. “We are so blessed,” he said gruffly.
To his relief, because he needed Kayleigh to be okay with what he’d done by pulling her away, she smiled back. “We are.”
Kayleigh usually scoffed when he said things like that, but then, she was naturally sarcastic and had grown up in a world that liked its women pliant and obedient. Scoffing was her only defense.
Not now, though. Now she gave him a watery smile and squeezed his hand. “We really fuckin’ are,” she said. She squared her jaw and turned to look out the window as the woods that had held them, protected them, and also trapped them whizzed by. “The woods don’t look nearly as scary from here, do they.”
Keeping tight hold of her hand, he looked through his own window, where the streaks of brown against a gray sky seemed strangely alien and very far away. “They don’t look like home anymore either.”
