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She snapped her fingers. “Slater.”
I coughed and met her gaze, drawing my best grin on my lips like a cartoonist. “Yes, Virginia—well, it’s fitting, isn’t it? It’s a charming name.”
She squinted. “I don’t trust you.”
“The sentiment is shared. Believe me.”
I winked at Bentley who was watching on with a mixture of horror and what appeared to be jealousy. Whatever it was, I couldn’t imagine his face getting any redder as he struggled to stand in the muddy flower bed. A door squeaked open and an old woman with wrinkled-up desert-brown skin and a large broom scuffled out to the yard.
Bentley attempted to apologize only to be met by the bristled end of the broom and a whole lot of curses shouted in Spanish.
The twins laughed. Virginia covered her mouth and stared at the ground, doing a horrible job of containing her amusement, and barely holding back tears too.
I nodded at the road. “Come on, then. Before you start any more trouble, Pinky McGee.”
“Ugh, I donotmiss those nicknames.”
“What? You didn’t miss me?”
I bit my tongue. Possession—that was what had just happened. A demon had possessed my mouth and forced me to spit out a question that I didn’t even mean to ask about something that I didn’t even mean to think about.
Truly, it must have been possession. That was the only explanation.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and invited her kids to start walking with her. “I, uh, haven’t thought about you in a while.” She glanced at the twin with the long hair as black and messy as her mama’s. “You know, it’s been a while.”
“Since your granddaddy did what he did?” I snorted. “Sure has been, Ginny.”
“You haven’t changed much.”
I eyed her carefully. “You changed a whole lot.”
We wandered past Bentley who was still getting accosted in Spanish.
I nodded toward the drama. “We don’t even need Telemundo to get some good novelas around here, huh?”
The girl twin giggled. When her mama shot her a hard look, she stopped out of respect but kept on giggling quietly when Virginia looked away.
“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way,” Virginia said in a low voice. She rubbed her right arm hard. “Bentley has been, uh…”
Instinctively, I reached for her arm to inspect it. “Has he been bothering you?”
“A bit.”
The boy twin hopped out from the other side of his mama and started walking backwards as he faced us. “That mean man has been following us around a lot this week. Mama keeps telling him to leave us alone, but he won’t.”
I raised my left eyebrow. “Really? Have you told either of the alphas?”
Virginia practically shrank into herself. “Well, I—”
The girl twin shook her head. “No, Mama said she didn’t want any trouble.”
“How did he know who you were?” I asked.
That halted her in her tracks. And really, I hadn’t meant to do such a thing, but she was turning now onto a stone path that led to a modest single-family home with a bright red mailbox.Dentonwas written in script on the side along with the number for the house,221.
Virginia rubbed the side of the mailbox and pointed to the front door. “Alright, buggies. Inside.”
“But, Mom, the Five Nights—”
