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He caught me looking at him, and one side of his mouth curled up. Setting down his beer, he sauntered over to us. “Doesn’t seem right that the birthday girl is stuck playing wallflower,” he said.
“I was just catching my breath,” I said. “Are you asking me to dance?”
“It’s not really my scene, but I can’t let you go ignored, angel.”
He held out his hand, and I took it. Naomi raised her wine glass to us as he pulled me into the middle of the floor. Damon leaned close, his bitter chocolate smell drifting over me as we started to move together. His hand was hot on my waist, his dark blue eyes even hotter with the promise of all the things he’d like to do when we had more privacy.
I gave myself over to that heat, to the music, letting the buzz of the wine I’d drunk take the edge off my nerves. We had a long way to go before we could hope to cut the toxic elements out of the witching community. Our progress so far had been slow. But at least I had my guys here with me, free in a way we’d never been before to love each other with every bit of our hearts.
It was getting late. After a few more songs, I noticed Lesley yawning. Naomi moved to the table to start clearing the wine. I stopped the music and said my goodnights to the two witches I was sheltering. As they headed to the guest bedrooms I’d offered them, all five of my consorts gathered around me.
They were ready to say their good-byes too. There was room for all of them to live on the estate with me, but small-town gossip traveled fast, and the unsparked employees on the estate would have noticed their constant presence pretty quick. While we figured out the best way to navigate the minefields of their regular lives, where our relationship wasn’t all that usual either, Gabriel had still been acting as the garage manager, living in the apartment overtop that building. Seth had moved into the house he’d renovated just beyond the Hallowell property, where we all sometimes met up and spent the night. And the other three guys had kept their apartments in the town that was a fifteen-minute walk down the highway from here.
But tonight was special. Tonight marked the birthday when every young witch came of age, when I would have taken control over this estate if I hadn’t displaced my father from it to the Hallowell home in Portland as part of my deal with the Frankfords.
I was Lady Hallowell in every way now. And I wanted to keep celebrating that with my consorts.
“Stay the night?” I said.
Kyler’s face brightened eagerly.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, taking my hand and squeezing it.
“Whatever the lady desires,” Jin murmured with a wink and a little bow.
We’d gotten up to an awful lot of fun of various sorts in the master bedroom’s king-sized bed. This night, I found when we reached the room that I really just wanted to cuddle. To soak up all the affection between us in one peaceful heap.
My resolve was tested momentarily as Damon helped me peel off my dress. The brush of his fingers down my sides sent a warm shiver through me. He pressed a kiss to my back.
“In the morning,” I said, touching his cheek.
He tucked his chin over my shoulder with a wordless grumble. But his voice was pleased when he said, “I’m looking forward to it.”
It was a tight fit, all of us piling together on the bed, but we’d had a fair bit of practice now. Lots of different blankets—that was the key. I ended up partly sandwiched between Gabriel and Seth, with Jin’s hand on my hip and Damon’s on my calf, and Kyler sprawled at the end of the over-long mattress in the vicinity of my feet.
With all of them there with me, all that love around me, I’d thought I might get to skip the dreams I’d been having lately. No such luck. Somewhere in the middle of my sleep, images rose up from our confrontation with the creatures in the Frankfords’ cave. That huge demonic face loomed through the portal, leering at me with a flick of its forked tongue. Then a massive arm reached out, and another. The monster pulled its torso through, its burning gaze fixed on me.
Heart thudding, I spun to run for it, and found myself surrounded by a crowd of witches in pale consorting dresses, their eyes wide with fear. “Stop it from taking us!” one cried, and another clutched desperately at my arm. A sharply hot breath gushed over me from behind.
I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save any of them. I wasn’t even sure I could save myself.
The demon swiped its clawed fingers right at me—and I jerked awake in my bed. The room was dark, everything still and quiet except for the murmur of the summer breeze through the trees outside. A clammy sweat had broken over my skin. My pulse was still thumping.
“Hey,” Seth mumbled, sounding still half asleep. He hugged me tighter where his arm was looped around my waist. “S’okay. We’ve got you.”
I relaxed back into the warmth of my consorts, letting my eyes drift back shut. But the horror of the dream didn’t quite leave me.
It wasn’t okay. That nightmare might not have been real for me, but it was real enough out there on Frankford’s seaside property. Real enough for the other young witches his faction might be dragging out there to do whatever it was they’d wanted me to do before I’d wriggled free from their clutches.
We had to save them. The question was how.
Chapter Two
Kyler
“Everything looks good,” I said, pushing myself away from the computer in Marvin Heard’s office. The landlord used his databases to keep track of properties he owned here and in a few of the larger towns nearby, and they’d been a mess when I’d first taken him on as an IT client. But that’d been three years ago. Everything was clean as a whistle now. “Unless you purposely go throwing spanners into the works, you should be good to go for a long time.”
“Where is ityou’regoing, anyway, Mr. Lennox?” the older man asked, leaning against the wall by a county map he had pinned there. “Suddenly you’re such a hot shot you don’t have time for us little guys anymore?” A grin stretched across his grizzled face to show he was teasing.
